Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World

It's hard not to be entertained AND enlightened by a Michael Lewis book. His books exploring subjects like Major League Baseball, the NFL left tackle, the stock market and financial shorting are to non-fiction, somewhat like Apple was to personal computing. He has the creative ability to explain in clear and simple terms subjects that are complex or seem otherwise mundane. As Jobs said, "the way we’re running the company, the product design, the advertising, it all comes down to this: Let’s make it simple. Really simple,” noting the Da Vinci quote on Apple's first brochure: "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." As Isaacson's Jobs biography explained, what Jobs meant was that you have to work really hard and creatively on the difficult things to make them simple enough for potential customers to enjoy and understand. Lewis writes with clarity and wit, using his unique creative abilities to render subjects compelling to the average reader. It's only a half-joke to say that if Lewis set his mind to fully understanding organic chemistry, he could deliver a book explaining it to the masses, or to proclaim that Lewis could deliver a best-seller about telephone books I read BOOMERANG a few years back, lost it in a move and bought the audio version early this year after Greek citizens soundly rejected the terms of a proposed 2d bailout agreement. While published in 2011, the book is still a timely, excellent aid to understanding the basic root causes of the debacles in Greece, Iceland and Ireland, Germany's role in European collapse, as well as giving a view here at home via an abbreviated examination of California's economic and political climate. To give a sampling of quotes from the book to show Lewis' ability to offer the intriguing with wit: Iceland: One problem encountered by “Alcoa, the biggest aluminum company in the country, ...when, in 2004, it set about erecting its giant smelting plant... [was] the so-called hidden people—or, to put it more plainly, elves—in whom some large number of Icelanders, steeped long and thoroughly in their rich folkloric culture, sincerely believe. Before Alcoa could build its smelter it had to defer to a government expert to scour the enclosed plant site and certify that no elves were on or under it. It was a delicate corporate situation, an Alcoa spokesman told me, because they had to pay hard cash to declare the site elf-free...." Germany: Lewis explains the Germans' obsession with human excrement, or scheiße (pronounced "scheisse"), as a way to explain that country's role in the global debt collapse: “Germans longed to be near [scheiße], but not in it. This, as it turns out, is an excellent description of their role in the current financial crisis.” "The first thing Gutenberg sought to publish, after the Bible, was a laxative timetable he called a 'Purgation-Calendar.' Then there is the astonishing number of anal German folk sayings. 'As the fish lives in water, so does the [scheiße] stick to the a$ $hole!,' to select but one of the seemingly endless examples.” Another is *you are just as dirty as toilet paper!* Greece: “Individual Greeks are delightful: funny, warm, smart, and good company. I left two dozen interviews saying... 'What great people!' They do not share the sentiment about one another: the hardest thing to do in Greece is to get one Greek to compliment another behind his back. No success of any kind is regarded without suspicion. Everyone is pretty sure everyone is cheating on his taxes, or bribing politicians, or taking bribes, or lying about the value of his real estate. And this total absence of faith in one another is self-reinforcing. The epidemic of lying and cheating and stealing makes any sort of civic life impossible; the collapse of civic life only encourages more lying, cheating, and stealing....” "The retirement age for Greek jobs classified as 'arduous' is as early as [55] for men and [50] for women.... when the state begins to shovel out generous pensions...." Over 600 Greek professions were able to get so classified: "hairdressers, radio announcers, waiters, musicians, and on and on and on." Ireland: “The Irish people and their country are like lovers whose passion is heightened by their suspicion that they will probably wind up leaving each other.” California: "California had organized itself, not accidentally, into highly partisan legislative districts. It elected highly partisan people to office and then required these people to reach a two-thirds majority to enact any new tax or meddle with big spending decisions. On the off chance that they found some common ground, it could be pulled out from under them by voters through the initiative process. Throw in term limits—no elected official now serves in California government long enough to fully understand it—and you have a recipe for generating maximum contempt for elected officials. Politicians are elected to get things done and are prevented by the system from doing it, leading the people to grow even more disgusted with them. 'The vicious cycle of contempt,' as Mark Paul calls it. California state government was designed mainly to maximize the likelihood that voters will continue to despise the people they elect.'" I highly recommend this book for both delight and enlightenment.

This is the first Lewis book I've read and found it very light reading. It was a nice combination of stories and facts that drove home reasons for the economic crisis that countries find themselves in today. I don't have a problem with the fact that the articles can be found for free on a website. I was willing to pay the $10 to download the book and have the information in one place. Boomerang explores five countries' experience with sovereign debt. This book is an easy and entertaining read because amusing anecdotal evidence is used to support the reasons behind each country's economic difficulty. From the twenty million nickels bought as a hedge against economic collapse to the exploding cars for insurance purposes, Lewis provides some great examples that illustrate the economic conditions countries find themselves. The book starts with a visit to Kyle Bass, a hedge fund manager who financially benefitted from the 2008 collapse. Bass has a large inventory of gold and precious metals and has now turned his attention to nickel by buying one million dollars worth, 20 million nickels. Bass' view on current economic suffering is an atonement for Wall Street's behavior. Lewis then moves on to Iceland where "When their three brand-new global-size banks collapsed, Iceland's 300,000 citizens found that they bore some kind of responsibility for $100 billion in banking losses--which works out to roughly $330,000 for every Icelandic man, woman, and child." Lewis goes further in describing the billions lost in currency speculation and the 85% collapse of Iceland's stock market to result in unknowable amount of loss for the average Icelander. Lewis sets up an exploding vehicle syndrome with this description of the financial state Icelanders found themselves in. "Now many Icelanders--especially young Icelanders--own $500,000 houses with $1.5 million mortgages, and $35,000 Range Rovers with $100,000 in loans against them. To the Range Rover problem there are two immediate solutions. One is to put it on a boat, ship it to Europe, and try to sell it for a currency that still has value. The other is set it on fire and collect the insurance: Boom!" Boomerang leaves us with an Iceland that has its Krona being a shadow of the peak period, a lamp that was out of stock now costs three times the amount before the crash, its work force ill-suited for the endowment it has, and insufficient political acumen to get it out of its predicament. The latest report on Iceland however, is that it is one of the bright lights in the economic recovery with 3% GDP growth. Iceland let its banks default and have deleveraged and returned to economic growth, something a small country can do without jeopardizing the world financial system. Lewis then moves onto Greece, the next stop on this tour of economic devastation. The explanation of Greece's debt comes from its culture, government spending without revenue collection. Lewis does a good job of annotating the level of ridiculousness Greece's public sector has come to "The average government job pays almost three times the average private-sector job." And "Stefanos Manos pointed out that it would be cheaper to put all Greece's rail passengers into taxicabs" are two examples of the state of Greek public spending. While in Greece, Lewis stays at the Vatopaidi monastery, the soul of corruption for this country. The monastery had fallen into disrepair but Father Ephraim uses three prongs to rebuild: relationships with the rich, international outreach, and real estate which provides the most interesting story of the Greek experience. Father Ephraim and others turn an ancient deed and a worthless lake into millions or even billions of dollars. Ireland is the next stop on this tour where the Anglo Irish bank looses 34 billion Euros or $3.4 trillion in the crisis. Total Irish bank losses tally to 106 billion Euros or $10.6 trillion. Lewis explains "The Irish budget deficit--in 2007 the country had a budget surplus--is now 32 percent of its GDP, the highest by far in the history of the euro zone." Lewis does a great job in contrasting where Ireland has come from and what it has achieved only to be set back by the greed of the finance industry. "In late 2006 the unemployment rate stood at a bit more than 4 percent; now it's 14 percent, and climbing toward rates not experienced since the mid-1980s." Before leaving Europe, Lewis describes Germany's role in the economic crisis. German's are described as trusting American financial statements as reliable and therefore suffered by investing in them. The German bank IKB became Wall Street's best customer. IKB hired Dirk Rothig, someone with financial experience in the States, to do something new and unusual for the bank. Rothig invented something called a conduit which grew the IKB portfolio from $10 billion in 2005 to $20 billion in 2007, according to Rothig. IKB ended up losing $15 billion on US subprime loans. The last stop on this tour of economic disaster comes back to the U.S. where Lewis looks at a 60 Minutes interview of Merideth Whitney and her analysis of the financial condition of State debt. Whitney doesn't think the States will have a problem because they can transfer their debt to the counties and the cities. This is where Lewis spends his last stop, analyzing a city in the worst financial condition in the States, Vallejo California. In Vallejo, businesses post "WE ACCEPT FOOD STAMPS" on their windows, weeds surround abandoned businesses, and traffic lights permanently blink since there are no police in the streets. Real estate in Vallejo fell 66% between 2006 and 2010. The main cause for this city's woes were public safety wage contracts that resulted in bankruptcy. Lewis concludes this trip with comments about human nature and the lack of forethought for everything from obesity to gambling, drug and alcohol addiction, and of course personal indebtedness. "Americans sacrifice their long-term interests for a short-term reward." This describes the underlying problem with the world economy today.

Great book

This book is about the debt crisis. This time it isn't about the banks and investment companies but about the governments and the crisis they faced after they took over the banks. This book is a collection of stories he wrote for Vanity Fair. Michael Lewis is very good at finding analogies to explain things. Entertaining, hilarious, and above all shocking.

Lewis decides to become a financial disaster tourist, and travels to various bankrupt European countries. He wants to find out at the ground level, what happened in; Iceland, Greece, and Ireland. Well Lewis collects the data he was looking for, and spins out quite the story. In a nutshell these countries get a hold of cheap foreign credit, and go into a wild financial mania. They also abandon all previous forms of prudent economic management. The details regarding the Greek economy, are beyond anything I have ever heard before. In fact, the Greek situation makes the former Tulip Mania and Dot Com Bubble, seem rather tame and orderly. The Greek debt problems have still not been fully resolved, so this makes the details all the more engaging. This is a small book, but the message delivers a big impact. The reader will be left with, a much better understanding of the current global financial dilemma. This book was hard to put down, and a very good read. Both general and financially interested readers, will be entertained and astonished.

This book is interesting because give the reader a frank feedback of financial reality behind the events: people are greedy and Germans are gullible. Jokes sidelined, the worst of all is that after reading this book the reader probably realizes that nothing has changed since 2008's financial crisis and the vicious circle, someday, will happen again and again (bubbles boom and bust).

Ogni capitolo racconta di uno stato europeo in crisi (e.g. Islanda, Irlanda, Grecia etc…). Molto interessante il capitolo sulla Germania