How to Speak Money
What the Money People Say--And What It Really Means
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
An entertaining and indispensable guide to the language of finance and economics by the writer hailed for “explain[ing] complex stuff in a down-to-earth and witty style” (The Economist).
To those who don’t speak it, the language of money can seem impenetrable and its ideas too complex to grasp. In How to Speak Money, John Lanchester—author of the New York Times best-selling book on the financial crisis, I.O.U.—bridges the gap between the money people and the rest of us.
With characteristic wit and candor, Lanchester reveals how the world of finance really works: from the terms and conditions of your personal checking account to the evasions of bankers appearing in front of Congress. As Lanchester writes, we need to understand what the money people are talking about so that those who speak the language don’t just write the rules for themselves.
Lanchester explains more than 300 words and phrases from “AAA rating” and “amortization” to “yield curve” and “zombie bank.” He covers things we say or hear every day—such as GDP, the IMF, credit, debt, equity, and inflation—and explains how hedge funds work, what the World Bank does, and why the language of money has gotten so complicated. Along the way he draws on everything from John Maynard Keynes to the Wu-Tang Clan, Friedrich Hayek to Thomas Piketty, The Wealth of Nations to Game of Thrones.
A primer, a polemic, and a reference book, How to Speak Money makes economics understandable to anyone. After all, “money,” as Lanchester writes, “is a lot like babies, and once you know the language, the rule is the same as that put forward by Dr. Spock: ‘Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.’”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Novelist (Capital) and New Yorker contributor Lanchester offers a terrific primer on financial jargon. Lanchester believes that ordinary people are perfectly capable of understanding the arcs of macroeconomics and managing their own microeconomic decisions they only need to learn the basic lingua franca. Lanchester's glossary cleverly illustrates arbitrage by way of cocoa futures, explains what a lender of last resort is, and helpfully defines terms such as "yield curve." Along the way, Lanchester throws in entertaining asides: for instance, he explains how the lexicographer who oversaw the Oxford English Dictionary felt about the word "monetarism." There are intriguing cultural byways, such as the plug for the "highly illuminating and not-at-all dated 1940 book Where are the Customers' Yachts? and a useful distinction between "wealthy" and "rich." The book's structure could be improved; it would be helpful if, within a definition, any words that have their own entries earlier or later in the book appeared in bold or italics. But that is a small quibble. Anyone who wants to understand the nightly news should keep this volume at hand.
