I.O.U.: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay
by John Lanchester
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Book Summary Information
Author: John LanchesterEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2010-01-05
ISBN: 1439169845
Number of pages: 272
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Book Reviews of I.O.U.: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay
Book Review: "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever."
Summary: 5 Stars
Opening with the line from Spinal Tap, "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever," novelist John Lanchester explains what happened with the derivatives, credit swaps, subprime mortgages, all of it. It's important stuff, but if you are interested at all, you've already read the newspaper and magazine accounts and you have a general, if not specific, idea of what happened and why. As a professional storyteller, Lanchester makes a confusing and infuriating tale clearer, but sadly no less infuriating.
In addition to making exotic financial instruments somewhat more understandable, Lanchester has some intriguing theories. For instance, he thinks that the fall of communism allowed capitalism to spiral out of control. Before 1989, we in the West were so concerned with showing how superior and desirable capitalism was compared to socialism, that we allowed our governments to rein in capitalism so that there were not too many outrageously rich people and not too many desperately poor people. Once communism was no longer a serious threat, we were free to take the restraints off capitalism, resulting in the outrageous disparity of super-rich and working poor.
Lanchester also thinks that the same theory applies to why the West is no longer condemning torture or assassination. It's not as if we hadn't been using torture and assassination all along, but at least we were careful to feign outrage when we were caught at it and we made a show of signing international treaties condemning it. Now we waterboard openly and admit that we have a list of assassination targets. "Kill or capture" is our way of "bringing the enemy to justice" and it's not by chance that "kill" is always stated as the first option.
It had seemed to me that the moment when nations started ditching any pretensions to human rights could be dated to when George W. Bush said "You're with us or you're with the enemy," but Lanchester's theory makes more sense.
Lanchester also adds his voice to those advocating for children to learn about economics in school. This seems obvious, especially in countries where we tell ourselves that capitalism and democracy go hand in hand. Shouldn't our children learn more about it and about economics in general, considering how important it is in our everyday lives, our politics, our future?
Lanchester, having explained and discussed the credit crunch and how it came about, leaves us with little hope that it won't happen again. He compares it to a non-lethal heart attack, which we can learn from and take steps to reduce our risk of having another. But it seems more likely that we'll celebrate our near miss with a bottle of whiskey, a big steak, and a couple of cigars. What could go wrong?
Summary of I.O.U.: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay
John Lanchester's brilliant survey of the current financial crisis explains how the booming global economy collapsed seemingly overnight.Economics Books
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