Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World

I had already read the US (California) excerpt in Vanity Fair a few months ago, but this book really opened my eyes to the "financial play" set on a worldwide stage. These real-life characters made unprecedented decisions based on greed and stupidity. Now we're all holding the broom to sweep up their mess. Grab your mop, because this house is dirty.

This is an easy read that will open your eyes about the excesses of easy money. Lewis uses great storytelling to reveal how Iceland, Greece, Ireland, Germany, and California used unrestrained borrowing power to destroy their public finance. I give it only 4 stars for two reasons. 1) A couple of the chapters read less well than other, especially Ireland. 2) The epub file here at the Google store is formatted strangely. On my Nook, it shifted, almost randomly between font formatting provided by the publisher and adjustable fonts. Annoying, and not something you expect from a book you pay for.

Anybody who is desires to better understand the world we live in should read this book. It provides a perspective and depth of explanation of the financial crisis you will not find elsewhere. If more fokks world understand these things we might be better eqipped to avoid another future and likely inevitable crisis.