Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World

At the end of every book I write there always seem to be people who deserve more than to be thanked at the end of a book. This one is no different. Act II of the financial crisis was set in places it would never have occurred to me to go. I’d like to thank Graydon Carter and Doug Stumpf, at Vanity Fair, for encouraging me to go there, and Jaime Lalinde, for researching these places so well that I sometimes felt he, not I, should be writing about them. Theo Phanos offered me not only friendship and encouragement but the shrewd views of an interesting money manager, from start to finish. At W. W. Norton, Janet Byrne has appeared from nowhere to improve my prose and, to the extent it is possible for an editor to do this, save me from myself. Starling Lawrence remains my touchstone.

Copyright © 2011 by Michael Lewis

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Vanity Fair, where the pieces in this book appeared, in slightly different form:

“Wall Street on the Tundra,” April 2009; “Beware of Greeks Bearing Bonds,” October 2010; “When Irish Eyes Are Crying,” March 2011; “It’s the Economy, Dummkopf!,” September 2011; “Too Fat to Fly,” November 2011.

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book,

write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.,

500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact

W. W. Norton Special Sales at specialsales@wwnorton.com or 800-233-4830

Manufacturing by Courier Westford

Book design by Chris Welch

Production manager: Anna Oler

Ebook Conversion: Kayci C. Wyatt, TIPS Technical Publishing

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lewis, Michael (Michael M.)

Boomerang : travels in the new Third World / Michael Lewis. — 1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-393-08181-7 (hardcover)

1. Global Financial Crisis, 2008–2009. 2. International finance. 3. Financial crises—United States—History—21st century. I. Title.

HB37172008 .L49 2011

330.9’0511—dc23

2011028241

Ebook ISBN: 978-0-393-08224-1

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110

www.wwnorton.com

W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.

Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT

1234567890