Boomerang

Travels in the New Third World

Paperback, 218 pages

English language

Published Dec. 14, 2011 by W.W. Norton & Company.

ISBN:
978-0-393-34344-1
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OCLC Number:
811616855

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4 stars (10 reviews)

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 pinata 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 …

1 edition

Review of 'Boomerang' on 'Goodreads'

1 star

Das passiert, wenn jemand, der sehr gut über Themen schreiben kann, mit denen er sich jahrelang befasst hat, glaubt, er könne auch über Länder schreiben, in denen er mal zwei Wochen war. Schlimmer "meine auf dem Weg vom Flughafen zum Hotel gewonnenen Vorurteile"-Reportagenstil, extraschlimm in der amerikanischen Variante von jemandem, dem das Konzept "andere Länder" grundsätzlich erst mal unbekannt und suspekt scheint ("was machen diese Menschen für Geräusche, hört sich ja an wie in Mordor, OH! Es ist Isländisch!")

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Subjects

  • Global Financial Crisis, 2008-2009
  • Financial crises
  • Global Financial Crisis (2008-2009) fast (OCoLC)fst01755654
  • International finance
  • History
  • Nonfiction
  • Economics

Places

  • United States