Boomerang: Travels in the New Third Worldby Michael Lewis
Norton, 2011. 213 pgs. Nonfiction.
It is hard to find the International Debt Crisis amusing, but Michael Lewis does bring his considerable wit to bear on the current European (and Californian) monetary crisis. According to Lewis (and his onsite interviews and investigations), Iceland went bust because the fishermen quit fishing and took up banking. Now a country with fewer inhabitants than greater Peoria, Illinois, is in the hole to the tune of $100 billion. Ireland's booming economy collapsed when the Irish created an enormous housing bubble by buying Irish real estate and then trying to sell it back to themselves. Greece pays enormous sums in wages and retirement benefits to its public-sector workers, but pretty much everyone in Greece cheats on his/her taxes and there is no enforceable penalty against doing so. The National Transportation system, for instance, shells out 7 times as much in salaries, pensions, and upkeep than it takes in: one observer wryly--and correctly--points out that everyone in Greece could be be sent hither and yon by taxi more cheaply than by public transit. And how did we all get to this point? Greed and Stupidity. Pretty much everyone knows that by now, but Michael Lewis' explanation and prose explains it all to you in the most engaging fashion.
LW
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