Baker & Taylor
As Pogo once said, "We have met the enemy and he is us." In this book the author offers a scathing assessment of fiscal blunders in foreign lands, and details how economic repercussions are sure to be felt on American soil. Financial bubbles grew and burst, not only in the U.S. but in countries as diverse as Iceland, Germany, and Greece. Mixing humor with prescient insight, he depicts a precarious situation that demands attention. The tsunami of cheap credit that rolled across the planet between 2002 and2008 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. Icelanders wanted to stop fishing and become investment bankers. The Greeks wanted to turn their country into a piänata 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. This investigation of bubbles beyond our shores is so sadly hilarious that it leads the American reader to a comfortable complacency: oh, those foolish foreigners. But when he turns a merciless eye on California and Washington, D.C., 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. - Publisher.

Norton Pub
As Pogo once said, "We have met the enemy and he is us."
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.

Icelanders wanted to stop fishing and become investment bankers. 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.

Michael Lewis's investigation of bubbles beyond our shores is so brilliantly, sadly hilarious that it leads the American reader to a comfortable complacency: oh, those foolish foreigners. But when he 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.

Book News
The rising tide of cheap credit, default credit swaps, and other contributors to the continuing global financial crisis are, for most of us, too complex to grasp. But author and finance journalist Lewis knows how to explain those intricacies, even if it requires coming up with characters so weird and cartoonish they almost certainly had to be faked. They weren't. Readers will meet a bright monk who figured out how to play Greek capitalism to save his failing monastery and a cod fisherman who, with three days training, became a currency trader for an Icelandic bank. His book has that rare combination of traits: educational and entertaining. Annotation ©2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Baker
& Taylor
Presents the author's darkly humorous investigation of the effects of the 2008 financial bubble on other countries before taking aim at greedy debtors in California and Washington, D.C.
The author of The Big Short describes the effect that the bubble of cheap credit readily available to almost anyone between 2002 and 2008 had on countries beside the U.S., including Iceland, Greece and Germany. 200,000 first printing.

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