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Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay

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By: John Lanchester
Narrated by: Jonathan Iris
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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.

John Lanchester travels with a cast of characters - including reckless bankers, 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.

©2010 John Lanchester (P)2010 WF Howes Ltd Economics Banking Taxation Thought-Provoking Capitalism Global Financial Crisis Socialism Great Recession
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Critic reviews

"A valiant and genuinely amusing attempt to describe how finance came off the rails...written with a good heart and a lively intellectual curiosity. ( Independent)
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This is a really fascinating audiobook. Lanchester has done a excellent job of making the financial concepts accessible and explaining them in everyday terms. (I'm an engineer and have next to no knowledge of economics and finance). Occasionally he gets a little carried away with analogies in art & music, but it's rare and it doesn't get in the way of the story.

The narration is some of the best I've heard. If I were reading this on paper, I think I might have struggled to motivate myself to finish it because it's such an unfamiliar area to me. Having it read via audiobook made it so easy to just keep listening though and I'm glad I did. It's a fascinating story, superbly told and engagingly read.

Well worth a listen.

Really good

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Recent exhortations in The Guardian that the time is now to stop reading fiction and start dipping into popular economics swayed me to give this one a try. I’m not going to stop reading fiction, and neither do I think (or, let’s be honest did I anticipate) that Lanchester has the authority of a Chomsky. But an honest endeavour in switching from fiction to faction is well rewarded - this is an informed and informing volume which has the added benefit of impeccable timing. It is important to understand the current economic environment and the insights provided here are wonderful, fresh and endlessly entertaining - but whether the prognosis goes far enough is a matter for further debate and consideration.

Whoopy? Do.

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This is an engaging and accessible explanation of why and how the crash of 2007/08 happened and what this means for the future. It is a very sobering listen in 2018 and John Lanchester's predictions have proven all too accurate. We would do well to heed his warnings and the warnings of those who came before him.

Very prescient...

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What happened 10 yrs ago which lead to collapse in the financial system and no bank interest and falling wages for many workers, for at least the next decade? This book begins to explain and proposes remedies. Sadly it also concedes such reforms won't be implemented. The author appears to believe "there is however no alternative economic system". He's wrong. The young and the disadvantaged simply won't accept being frozen out like this. Change is coming.

Deeply pessimistic, very well written.

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I've read several books (Gillian Tett's Fools Gold, Michael Lewis's The Big Short, Gordon Brown's apology..) about the financial crisis, so I can't really say I learnt anything new from John Lanchester. However, I was richly amused and entertained by his whimsical and informal style. His wry wit and colloquial turn of phrase often had me laughing out loud. And it is a story so amazing, so profound and so ongoing (unfortunately) that it bears retelling a few times, in different registers, by different people. Mr Lanchester is a definite outsider. Son of an old fashioned (good/safe) banker, he read English and became a writer. He can take the 'man in the street' perspective, and uses analogies that make the whole episode both accessible and maximally absurd.

Normally I don't like narrators trying to mimic real characters (e.g. the voices of Ronald Reagan and Alan Greenspan), but in this context - a rather theatrical book - it does more or less work. The narrator also manages to personify Mr Lanchester's animated and humorous style.

Elegance and charm, jazzing on a well-known theme

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