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Whoops!

Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay

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By: John Lanchester
Narrated by: Jonathan Iris
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Summary

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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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 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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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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A very interesting explanation of why the banks caused the worlds recession. You will be amazed how stupid the system really was.

A easy explanation of why the worlds skint

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