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Whoops!: Why Everyone Owes Everyone And No One Can Pay (2010)

by John Lanchester(Favorite Author)

4 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1846142857 (ISBN13: 9781846142857)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Allen Lane

review 1: Lanchester, a Brit and writer by trade, started his research into the current financial debacle as background for a novel he was writing. He soon found a mind-boggling story worth telling without any fictional embellishment. His description of credit markets, hedge-funds, mortgages and other financial toys are remarkably clear and easy to understand. Lanchester peppers his description of the financial meltdown with stories of the self-satisfied bankers who helped create this debacle. The book is surprisingly readable, never dry and rich with a heavy serving of British snark and a soupcon of vitriol. The British take is any additional interesting facet."So yes, the regulators were useless, but their failures wasn't like that of a lifeguard who doesn't notice that some of hi... mores swimmers are in trouble, it was more of a lifeguard supervising swimmers who are secretly pouring blood into the water because they think it would be more exciting if the place was livened up with a few sharks."
review 2: GREED AINT SO GOOD AFTER ALLOnce the hype of the current election fades into memory, whichever parcel of rouges wins sufficient seats in Parliament to lord it over us for the next four or five years is going to have their victory somewhat soured by the parlous state of the nations finances. Cuts of around twenty percent in public spending are being touted for the next few years, and beyond the effect of these cuts on a whole range of public services, this will also precipitate an unprecedented fall in aggregate demand in the economy. In short it seems likely that for a good part of this decade the economy is going to be somewhat sluggish, over all growth is likely to be at its lowest level since the war. No doubt the principal sufferers will be, as usual, those at the bottom of the heap, but it is difficult to imagine that it will not affect a far larger segment of the population in one way or another.John Lanchester's short book "Whoops!" is an attempt to explain how we got into this state of affairs for the general reader. In a tone that combines humour as well as a restrained anger, Lanchester provides a narrative of the events, and identifies the main reasons for the financial mayhem that hit the world economy in 2008 and 2009. These include the deregulation of the financial markets in the post Bretton Woods world economy, governments closeness to the financial sector, the permissive regulatory regime ("anything goes") that sector operated in which allowed all sorts of destructive "innovations" to evolve, and the rapacious expansion of the sub-prime mortgage market. He goes beyond these criticisms to question the awe in which the financial sector and the market paradigm is held within the economy and society. After all would the sub-prime fiasco have occurred if the United States had a public sector housing policy that allowed those on low or erratic incomes, to house themselves without having to turn to a market that they evidently could not afford to participate in?As succinct and clearly written book, both in terms of technicalities and morals, as the credit crunch is likely to produce. It is also encouraging to see a novelist who is able to engage with these issues in a manner that is engaging and informative. John Lanchester has written a very good book that deserves a wide readership. less

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