Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World - Michael Lewis

When Lewis was busy researching what would become The Big Short, he ran across a Dallas investor who seemed so outlandish that Lewis brushed him off. Governments, the guy told him, would be the next domino to fall due to the economic crisis. But this idea seemed so absurd as to likely be false that Lewis gave it little other thought, until it looked like governments were going to fail. And since he already had that good good background in his pocket from The Big Short, he was able to continue to watch the fallout through governments. 

Boomerang is a short little book that details big fiscal failure. Starting in Iceland where a lot of fishermen decided to try their hand as investment brokers, through Greece where austerity measures were crippling the bribery economy, to Ireland, Germany and finally California, Lewis finds a culture of easy money and the governments that spent it. 

The details are sad and overwhelming. How can governments behave so badly? How can the outspend so richly? How can they possibly not see this as a problem? Turns out governments were having a grand time bailing out banks who had made monumentally stupid gambles and passing that cost on to their citizens. But, to try to write of an entire national character based on a couple weeks of travel with carefully selected citizens may be a bit of a stretch and obviously unfair to the entire populace of these countries. 

Frustrating and full of gallows type humor, Boomerang made me feel that absolutely no one is minding the store. And we're all doomed.

3.5/5.