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Fascinating...the book could not be more timely...a sharp-edged narrative that leaves readers with a visceral understanding of the fiscal recklessness that lies behind today's headlines (Michiko Kakutani New York Times )
Michael Lewis's bravura journey through Europe's economic underbelly brilliantly charts the consequences of a world plagued by debt...highly enjoyable...nicely politically incorrect, often very funny, and shot through with genuine insight (Robert Harris Sunday Times )
Brilliant ... he has a novelist's gift (Spectator, Books of the Year )
Lewis' investigation of bubbles across Europe is brilliantly, sadly hiliarious (GQ magazine )
He writes with the wit and observational eye of a travel writer (Richard Fitzpatrick Irish Examiner )
He writes quite brilliantly and understands the complex financial matters whereof he speaks. As polemical prose goes, it is hard to beat (Howard Davies Management Today )
Lewis is the finest storyteller of our generation (Malcolm Gladwell )
He is so good everyone else may as well pack up (Evening Standard )
Michael Lewis meets some extraordinary characters in his excursion through the barely controlled madness that is modern finance ... lucid, entertaining (Tony Barber Financial Times )
Michael Lewis's bravura journey through Europe's economic underbelly brilliantly charts the consequences of a world plagued by debt...highly enjoyable...nicely politically incorrect, often very funny, and shot through with genuine insight (Robert Harris Sunday Times )
Brilliant ... he has a novelist's gift (Spectator, Books of the Year )
Lewis' investigation of bubbles across Europe is brilliantly, sadly hiliarious (GQ magazine )
He writes with the wit and observational eye of a travel writer (Richard Fitzpatrick Irish Examiner )
He writes quite brilliantly and understands the complex financial matters whereof he speaks. As polemical prose goes, it is hard to beat (Howard Davies Management Today )
Lewis is the finest storyteller of our generation (Malcolm Gladwell )
He is so good everyone else may as well pack up (Evening Standard )
Michael Lewis meets some extraordinary characters in his excursion through the barely controlled madness that is modern finance ... lucid, entertaining (Tony Barber Financial Times )
Product Description
Having made the U.S. financial crisis comprehensible for us all in The Big Short, Michael Lewis realised that he hadn't begun to get grips with the full story. How exactly had it come to hit the rest of the world in the face too? Just how broke are we really?
Boomerang is a tragi-comic romp across Europe, in which Lewis gives full vent to his storytelling genius. The 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. The Irish wanted to stop being Irish. The Germans wanted to be even more German. Michael Lewis's investigation of bubbles across Europe is brilliantly, sadly hilarious. He also turns a merciless eye on America: on California, the epicentre of world consumption, where we see that a final reckoning awaits the most avaricious of nations too.
This is the ultimate book of our times. It's time to brace ourselves for impact. And, with Michael Lewis, to laugh out loud while we're doing it.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
36 of 37 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Michael Lewis has written another highly readable account of the incredible mess we have made of global finance this time turning his attention away from the US towards Europe.
Like many people who study the causes and consequences of the current financial crisis there is the constant question gnawing away as to why some countries acted in the way they did and why others didn't. The real pleasure in this book is looking deep into the character of a number of the most affected nations (Iceland, Ireland, Greece, Germany and the US) in order to better understand how they ended up in their resepctive situations. In doing so, he pens very revealing portraits of long held national characteristics that helped me build a picture of how and why these countries ended up where they are now. As with 'The Big Short' it is one of his great skills to take a particular incident or story and to sensibly extrapolate it for a wider meaning. There are no shortage of them here and each is used to great effect.
If I have a small criticism of the book it is that it feels a little slight for such a sweeping subject. At around 200 broadly spaced pages the book can be rattled through in a couple of hours and does leave the reader feeling there's more to be said on this subject.
Like many people who study the causes and consequences of the current financial crisis there is the constant question gnawing away as to why some countries acted in the way they did and why others didn't. The real pleasure in this book is looking deep into the character of a number of the most affected nations (Iceland, Ireland, Greece, Germany and the US) in order to better understand how they ended up in their resepctive situations. In doing so, he pens very revealing portraits of long held national characteristics that helped me build a picture of how and why these countries ended up where they are now. As with 'The Big Short' it is one of his great skills to take a particular incident or story and to sensibly extrapolate it for a wider meaning. There are no shortage of them here and each is used to great effect.
If I have a small criticism of the book it is that it feels a little slight for such a sweeping subject. At around 200 broadly spaced pages the book can be rattled through in a couple of hours and does leave the reader feeling there's more to be said on this subject.
18 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition
First the critical point: this is clearly a rewrite of previous articles and to make a very short book longer, Lewis has inserted a part on the US local government which is interesting, but especially the last chapter is pretty irrelevant for the main argument.
And then the positive part: this is really a good and useful book about the financial meltdown in Iceland and Ireland and its European connections. Greece is perhaps too specific, mainly about one case of corruption which tells how far Greece really is from ordinary developed European countries (the main example is a monastery which succeeded in changing a worthless property into extremely profitable land with the help of combined superstition and very high level corruption). But in both Iceland and Ireland, Lewis is very thorough in showing how incompetent and purely amateurish the financial system was an how in both cases the limitless giving of easy credit to people who did not understand anything of real economic activities. Perhaps the most devastating is how the German local banks let themselves to be deceived by Wall Street so that one German banks was the sole buyer of already totally worthless papers emanating from the Wall Street. And these banker were not even motivated by greed and enormous remunerations, only by trust and ignorance. In the final analysis, never trust something which has grown consistently over average for several years. It is a bubble, and bubbles burst. For those who lose their livelihoods, it is not fun, but for those reading about it, Lewis gives quite a lot to laugh about.
And then the positive part: this is really a good and useful book about the financial meltdown in Iceland and Ireland and its European connections. Greece is perhaps too specific, mainly about one case of corruption which tells how far Greece really is from ordinary developed European countries (the main example is a monastery which succeeded in changing a worthless property into extremely profitable land with the help of combined superstition and very high level corruption). But in both Iceland and Ireland, Lewis is very thorough in showing how incompetent and purely amateurish the financial system was an how in both cases the limitless giving of easy credit to people who did not understand anything of real economic activities. Perhaps the most devastating is how the German local banks let themselves to be deceived by Wall Street so that one German banks was the sole buyer of already totally worthless papers emanating from the Wall Street. And these banker were not even motivated by greed and enormous remunerations, only by trust and ignorance. In the final analysis, never trust something which has grown consistently over average for several years. It is a bubble, and bubbles burst. For those who lose their livelihoods, it is not fun, but for those reading about it, Lewis gives quite a lot to laugh about.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
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If you are not thoroughly depressed by all the talk of the collapse of the Euro and the imminent demise of the world as we know it, and actually want to read about some of the reasons behind the latest economic catastrophe, then look no further than Michael Lewis's excellent new book `Boomerang - The Meltdown Tour'.
Lewis is following on from his previous page turner on the truth behind the credit crunch, credit swaps, and derivatives shenanigans in the US in `The Big Short', which by the way I also heartily recommend. He has turned his attention away from the banking institutions per se, to the current near collapse of the economies of whole countries, and does so in his usual accessible, honest, no nonsense, and very entertaining way.
Iceland, in Lewis's view, has a feral streak due in part to its size and relative isolation, which led to enormous risks being taken by its banks, and the near obliteration of its economy. He pulls no punches either: `Icelanders wanted to stop fishing and become investment bankers, and to allow their alpha males to reveal a theretofore suppressed megalomania'. Ouch!
He describes how in Greece civic life became impossible due to a total breakdown of the tax system, and to general civic lying and cheating on a grand scale. Slightly ironic from a country that is held up as the cradle of democracy. Lewis describes the unlikely role of a desolate Greek monastery in proceedings in a very engaging way, and also the role of banker baddies Goldman Sachs, who Lewis argues `engaged in a series of apparently legal but nonetheless repellent deals designed to hide the Greek government's true level of indebtedness.' Take that!
Ireland's crazy Russian roulette style dependence on ever increasing land values, which fuelled a building boom, and has left a legacy of ghost estates across the country, in which no-one wants to live, is also highlighted. Some of the statistics that Lewis uses to substantiate his arguments are so insane they would be funny if not so tragic. For example, by 2007 Irish banks were lending 40% more to property developers alone than they were to the entire Irish population in 2000. Just wow.
His peccadilloes about the allegedly anally obsessed Germans are very amusing, even though their economy has not collapsed - yet. Lewis shows how rash they were to enter into the Maastricht Treaty and form the Euro in the way that they did, and therefore in effect shore up all the weaker European Euro economies. And to round off the book Lewis shows how certain US states like California, who let's face it are nearly as big as a lot of countries, have got into mounting debts problems due to a colossal public sector pay bill and a pensions black hole.
If any of this sounds uncomfortably familiar, then it should do. Lewis has an uncanny knack of putting his finger right on the economic pulse, and getting straight to the heart of these complex economic situations like a knife through butter. I sincerely hope that his next book will be a deeper look into the British economic malaise and the crazy continuing obsession with rewarding failure and greed within our own banking sector.
Lewis is following on from his previous page turner on the truth behind the credit crunch, credit swaps, and derivatives shenanigans in the US in `The Big Short', which by the way I also heartily recommend. He has turned his attention away from the banking institutions per se, to the current near collapse of the economies of whole countries, and does so in his usual accessible, honest, no nonsense, and very entertaining way.
Iceland, in Lewis's view, has a feral streak due in part to its size and relative isolation, which led to enormous risks being taken by its banks, and the near obliteration of its economy. He pulls no punches either: `Icelanders wanted to stop fishing and become investment bankers, and to allow their alpha males to reveal a theretofore suppressed megalomania'. Ouch!
He describes how in Greece civic life became impossible due to a total breakdown of the tax system, and to general civic lying and cheating on a grand scale. Slightly ironic from a country that is held up as the cradle of democracy. Lewis describes the unlikely role of a desolate Greek monastery in proceedings in a very engaging way, and also the role of banker baddies Goldman Sachs, who Lewis argues `engaged in a series of apparently legal but nonetheless repellent deals designed to hide the Greek government's true level of indebtedness.' Take that!
Ireland's crazy Russian roulette style dependence on ever increasing land values, which fuelled a building boom, and has left a legacy of ghost estates across the country, in which no-one wants to live, is also highlighted. Some of the statistics that Lewis uses to substantiate his arguments are so insane they would be funny if not so tragic. For example, by 2007 Irish banks were lending 40% more to property developers alone than they were to the entire Irish population in 2000. Just wow.
His peccadilloes about the allegedly anally obsessed Germans are very amusing, even though their economy has not collapsed - yet. Lewis shows how rash they were to enter into the Maastricht Treaty and form the Euro in the way that they did, and therefore in effect shore up all the weaker European Euro economies. And to round off the book Lewis shows how certain US states like California, who let's face it are nearly as big as a lot of countries, have got into mounting debts problems due to a colossal public sector pay bill and a pensions black hole.
If any of this sounds uncomfortably familiar, then it should do. Lewis has an uncanny knack of putting his finger right on the economic pulse, and getting straight to the heart of these complex economic situations like a knife through butter. I sincerely hope that his next book will be a deeper look into the British economic malaise and the crazy continuing obsession with rewarding failure and greed within our own banking sector.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
The European financial crisis in a nutshell
The global financial crisis really started to show its potential by 2008. Around the world stock markets had fallen, large financial institutions had collapsed or merged, and... Read more
Published 21 days ago by Peter Buckley
background for our current Euro crisis
This is a very well written book which takes the reader behind the headlines to explain how the Greek economy got into such a mess. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Steve Trumpet
Boomerang
A mildly interesting but insubstantial read.
A whistle-stop tour of some of the far flung places which succumbed to financial madness, this is an easier read than... Read more
A whistle-stop tour of some of the far flung places which succumbed to financial madness, this is an easier read than... Read more
Published 1 month ago by dali
Really enjoyable
I'm not a great book reader at all, but am loving this book. It has a nice balance of fact and humour and is well written. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Brian Nichols
Disappointing, Mr Lewis - this is a short collection of magazine...
I'm a fan of Michael Lewis and have devoured most of his books. I was most disappointed in this one as I feel Lewis is trading on his name since:
* I've read the... Read more
* I've read the... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Basil
Boomerang the meltdown tour
Excellent book, hard hitting sobering account of the financial mess we are in.. Good compelling read, short and precise. I would watch for more books from this author.
Published 3 months ago by cutewilly
Xenophobic nonsense with a few interesting financial crisis anecdotes
Michael Lewis is a excellent writer. Liars Poker and The Big Short were very good reads. This book is poor in comparison. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Mr. G. Pritchard
Fascinating stuff
This was a great quick read. Michael Lewis has a brilliant style of writing and this is full of amazing statistics and anecdotes. Read more
Published 3 months ago by The Emperor
Tongue-in-Cheek Humor about Global Responses to Being Awash in Cheap...
"And you shall give the money, with which the excess number of them is redeemed, to Aaron and his sons. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Donald Mitchell
Great - funny and witty
Michael Lewis is an entertaining writer, but informative too. For anyone who's interested in an alternative, well-written and witty explanation of the current financial malaise... Read more
Published 4 months ago by F. R. Lewis
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