Boomerang

An assessment of fiscal blunders in foreign lands, which details how these global economic repercussions were felt on American soil. Financial bubbles grew and burst, not only in the U.S. but in countries all over the world. The tsunami of cheap credit that rolled across the planet between 2002 and 2008 was more than a simple financial phenomenon: it was temptation, offering entire societies the chance to reveal aspects of their characters they could not normally afford to indulge. Icelanders wanted to stop fishing and become investment bankers. The Greeks wanted to turn their country into a pi?ata stuffed with cash and allow as many citizens as possible to take a whack at it. The Germans wanted to be even more German; the Irish wanted to stop being Irish. And the United States simply wanted more of everything it already had.