The book starts with coverage of Greeces financial crisis, and the (by now) well-documented fact that the Greek have a revenue problem in that everyone cheats on taxes. Then he moves on to Iceland, which had turned itself into a financial center by effectively trading equity to each other at insanely high prices. Then he moves on to Ireland, where the housing bubble took off in a big way, but the government came in and guaranteed all the private sector loan, in a major case of major-bone-headedness, damning the Irish public to pay for the sins of the crazy people.
The book rounds off with an examination of the Germans and the Californians, each of whom have yet to dealt with their own crisis. At the end of reading all of these short articles in short order (this is a very short book, and easily read in one day), its tough not to come to the conclusion that every country treats finances and financial responsibility very differently. Culture explains almost all of it, though it doesnt explain the bone-headed behavior of certain officials (and I dont mean the Californians exclusively) very well.
Unfortunately, the treatment of the financial topics is very shallow. For instance, theres no contrasting of the very different ways Iceland and Ireland chose to handle their crisis. In hind-sight, the very big differences have led to vastly different outcomes. Because Lewis doesnt actually have a framework or theory to hang it all together, the reader is left thinking that theres not a lot that can be done. He doesnt even interview people who think that the problem is soluble.
This is very easy vacation reading, but unfortunately, not very good for people who want a deeper understanding of the current arguments about what to do about the economy. For that, you might want to read The Big Short instead.
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