Whoops!: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay
John Lanchester
Whoops!: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay
There’s probably a word in German for that feeling you get when you can understand something while it’s being explained to you, but lose hold of the explanation as soon as it stops. A lot of writing about the credit crunch has that effect: you can grasp it while it’s going on, and then as soon as it’s over, you can no longer remember the difference between a CDO, a CDS, an MBS, and a toasted cheese sandwich. Whoops! makes it possible for all of us to grasp how we found ourselves in this predicament. What went wrong? In 2000, the total GDP of Earth was $36 trillion. At the start of 2007 it was $70 trillion. Today that growth has gone suddenly and sharply into decline, with an effect roughly resembling that of putting a car into reverse while doing seventy down a motorway. John Lanchester travels with a cast of characters - including reckless banksters, snoozing regulators, complacent politicians, predatory lenders, credit-drunk spendthrifts, and innocent bystanders to understand deeply and genuinely what is happening and why we feel the way we do.
3.8 out of 5 based on 6 reviews
|
Omniscore:
|
| Classification |
Non-fiction |
| Genre |
Business, Finance & Law |
| Format |
Hardback |
| Pages |
240 |
| RRP |
£20.00 |
| Date of Publication |
January 2010 |
| ISBN |
978-1846142857 |
| Publisher |
Allen Lane |
| |
There’s probably a word in German for that feeling you get when you can understand something while it’s being explained to you, but lose hold of the explanation as soon as it stops. A lot of writing about the credit crunch has that effect: you can grasp it while it’s going on, and then as soon as it’s over, you can no longer remember the difference between a CDO, a CDS, an MBS, and a toasted cheese sandwich. Whoops! makes it possible for all of us to grasp how we found ourselves in this predicament. What went wrong? In 2000, the total GDP of Earth was $36 trillion. At the start of 2007 it was $70 trillion. Today that growth has gone suddenly and sharply into decline, with an effect roughly resembling that of putting a car into reverse while doing seventy down a motorway. John Lanchester travels with a cast of characters - including reckless banksters, snoozing regulators, complacent politicians, predatory lenders, credit-drunk spendthrifts, and innocent bystanders to understand deeply and genuinely what is happening and why we feel the way we do.
Reviews
The Daily Express
Christopher Silvester
"Thoroughly entertaining... What sets Whoops! apart from its underlying sources is its defiantly cheery tone, mocking wit and mission to explain how so many different elements coalesced to create a perfect financial storm. It is supremely readable, free of jargon and accessible to anyone with a curious mind."
29/01/2010
Read Full Review
The Sunday Times
Robert Harris
"Lanchester is so determined to wear his learning lightly it occasionally slips off his shoulders — “house prices go up and down like a bride’s nightie”… This is what George Bernard Shaw might have called An Intelligent Person’s Guide to the Crisis of Modern Capitalism, and everyone ought to read it, for this crisis is not by any means over but probably still in its early stages."
24/01/2010
Read Full Review
The Daily Telegraph
Andrew Martin
"[An] elegant, witty and – virtually a miracle to my mind – comprehensible account of the credit crunch… Being a novelist, Lanchester has the imagination to encompass the ignorance of his reader. I was furtively punching the air as he cleared up one mystery after another: the nature of the Big Bang…the definition of 'a bank’…"
31/01/2010
Read Full Review
The Independent
Stephen Foley
"Whoops! is a valiant and genuinely amusing attempt to describe how finance came off the rails. It is a little book with a big sweep; inevitably, many of its explanations are contentious, and some tendentious, but it is written with a good heart and a lively intellectual curiosity."
29/01/2010
Read Full Review
The Financial Times
Paul Myners
"Lanchester pulls no punches in describing the consequences of the global financial crises for the weak and vulnerable… He makes less progress in explaining how the once-sober business of banking became intoxicated and previously sound banks were swamped by the egos of their executives and traders. Nor does he ask why those who own our major banks, pension funds and insurers, showed – and continue to show – little interest in their investments."
01/02/2010
Read Full Review
The Guardian
Howard Davies
"...if one can exclude the Clarksoniana, by far the best parts of the book are those that get to grips with complex financial engineering. At times, Lanchester relies quite heavily on Gillian Tett's Fool's Gold, but he has constructed a clear description of credit default swaps, CDOs, CDOs squared and the other exotic flora and fauna of financial markets in the noughties. Here, truth is often stranger than fiction, and he lets the story tell itself."
23/01/2010
Read Full Review