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Title details for Boomerang by Michael Lewis - Available

Boomerang

Travels in the New Third World

by Michael Lewis
Dylan Baker
Audiobook
2 of 2 copies available
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2 of 2 copies available
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Big Short, Liar's Poker and The Blind Side!

The tsunami of cheap credit that rolled across the planet between 2002 and 2008 was more than a simple financial phenomenon: it was temptation, offering entire societies the chance to reveal aspects of their characters they could not normally afford to indulge.
The Greeks wanted to turn their country into a piñata stuffed with cash and allow as many citizens as possible to take a whack at it. The Germans wanted to be even more German; the Irish wanted to stop being Irish.
The trademark of Michael Lewis's bestsellers is to tell an important and complex story through characters so outsized and outrageously weird that you'd think they have to be invented. (You'd be wrong.) In Boomerang, we meet a brilliant monk who has figured out how to game Greek capitalism to save his failing monastery; a cod fisherman who, with three days' training, becomes a currency trader for an Icelandic bank; and an Irish real estate developer so outraged by the collapse of his business that he drives across the country to attack the Irish Parliament with his earth-moving equipment.
Lewis's investigation of bubbles beyond our shores is so brilliantly, sadly hilarious that it leads the American listener to a comfortable complacency: Oh, those foolish foreigners. But when Lewis turns a merciless eye on California and Washington DC, we see that the narrative is a trap baited with humor, and we understand the reckoning that awaits the greatest and greediest of debtor nations.
"No one writes with more narrative panache about money and finance than Lewis."
—Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    October 3, 2011

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781442341265
      • File size: 206473 KB
      • Duration: 07:10:09

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      After the housing bubble burst and the giant banking bailouts began, a number of world economies hung--and still hang--in the balance. Dylan Baker uses a friendly, folksy delivery to examine the fascinating, frightening, and mind-boggling ways that the cultures of Iceland, Greece, Ireland, Germany, and, yes, California handled the pursuit of wealth. Icelandic fishermen stopped fishing and became currency traders. The Irish saw themselves as land barons. Californians paid too much for everything. And they all ended up being left on the hook for hundreds of billions of dollars--and still are. Baker's voice reflects Michael Lewis's bemused realization that many of these cultures and individuals had no idea of the manipulative power of the global financial industry. If you didn't laugh, you'd cry. B.P. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      December 5, 2011
      Essentially an offbeat travelogue, Lewis's latest examines the recent global financial crisis by visiting the locales that have faltered beyond reasonable expectation. Though journalistic, there is a distinctly anthropological approach to vivid depictions of how particular cultural values contributed to such a bizarre, devastating series of events. In his dynamic narrative, Lewis simplifies complex financial systems without condescension, applies a degree of rationality to absurd decisions, and presents key individuals' profiles without denigration. Dark, deadpan humor is injected throughout: Iceland as a nation of fishermen-cum-hedge fund managers with "no idea what they were doingâ; Greece's "fantastic messâ of scandalous monasteries, tax-evasion and top-down corruption; Ireland's busted banks and stratospheric losses debilitating a now "distinctly third worldâ country. Germany is singled-out for its "preternatural love of rulesâ and naiveté regarding the so-called "riskless assetâ while California tops the list of "America's scariest financial placesâ following their ratings downgrade and piling debts. Easily devoured in one sitting, Lewis (Moneyball) manages to gracefully explain what happened with a unique regard for both the strengths and weaknesses of humankind.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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