I.O.U.
Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Witty, gritty and wise, a brilliant novelist takes on the world's economic meltdown in a book that will define the crisis.
The wildest story in the world these days is not fiction, it's what's really happening all around us as the world's global economy has gone into freefall. How did we get here? What does it all mean? How could so many smart people be so dumb and believe their own hype? Accessibly, cleverly, and with mordant humour, Lanchester trots the globe in search of the answers to these questions — to Iceland, the scene of catastrophic bank collapse, to Hong Kong, the city of his birth built at the altar of free-market capitalism, to the high-stakes leveraging of Wall Street and to the tragedy of lost homes in small-town America. And in his capable hands, we see and understand what went wrong and why. Lanchester believes that this crisis gives us an opportunity to bring about much-needed change and that a stonger and more compassionate system can emerge from the wreckage. This is the book that people will still be reading a generation from now, as we read Galbraith's brilliant analysis of the Great Depression.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With clarity and a conversational style often (sometimes deliberately) lacking in the financial industry and its coverage, British journalist Lanchester (The Debt to Pleasure) takes readers on a comprehensive global tour of 2008's economic meltdown, focusing on each guilty parties' contributions to-and missed opportunities to halt-the worldwide crisis. Starting with the political buildup and then marching through the field of "banksters," regulators, mortgage companies and everyone else in a position to know better, Lanchester illustrates exactly how loans from predatory and incompetent players wound up being sold as triple-A investments, and how a subsequent housing market dip toppled the financial system. By prioritizing the financial sector and tenets of laissez-faire capitalism (to the point that it "became a kind of secular religion"), those in charge of the markets failed to identify the growing systemic dangers; meanwhile, those responsible to the public acted as if benefits for financial institutions also benefited every economic participant, no matter how small. Laypeople seeking to understand the crisis, and what it means for their own bank account, will find Lanchester's volume an oasis of understanding in a sea of partisan spin and convoluted financial language.
Customer Reviews
I.O.U. A unique perspective of the financial Crisis
A look at the financial crisis from a layman's point of view. I agree with the author most in the west went on a spending spree and the bill is due. Most governments in the west are printing money or quantitive easing and delaying the pain but the worst is yet to come.