Super Reviewer Michiko Kakutani has one economics book in her 'top ten' list for 2010, and it's Nouriel Roubini's book Crisis Economics. I have a strange fascination with her because I remember having to distinguish between Brouwer and her dad's fixed point theorems, and now can't remember the difference (other than Kakutani's is a generalization of Brouwer). You can use these fixed point theorem's to prove John Nash's non-cooperative equilibrium, which was rather clever, and unfortunately suggested that many important economic proofs can be found via abstruse mathematics. Alas, this was the exception, not the rule.
If Crisis Economics was not written by a famous man like Roubini, who convinced many that his permabear stance was vindicated by the events of 2008, this book would never be read. It's filled with vapid analysis and exaggerations. Kakutani seems to buy Roubini's claim that he predicted the 2008 housing crisis in September 2006, but that speech is conveniently no longer available anywhere, probably because it actually contains a large number of qualifiers and tens of other things that could happen. Basically, the same speech he had been giving for 15 years.
The idea that regulatory arbitrage, the ability of banks to choose whether they are state chartered or nationally chartered, was a big deal, is not true. These different regulatory bodies (OCC vs. FDIC) had significantly different regulations. Further, all regulators were encouraging, not discouraging, home lending of all sorts via the target of disadvantaged homeowners. The period prior to 2007 was hardly one of free-market fundamentalism, as finance was a relatively highly regulated industry, with lots of different regulators (SEC, the Fed, OCC, FDIC, OTS, SEC, etc.) at work. His focus on meaningful financial reform centers on bringing back the anachronistic Glass-Steagall, and strengthening the clueless SEC, as if that would have made any difference.
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