Whoops

My recent leisure reading is Whoops! Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay (大債時代) by John Lanchester.

I must say I was not particularly impressed by the title when I first saw this paperback in a local bookstore last year. I bought it by an accident – I was trying to use up the cash dollar of my credit card, and this book did appear in a handy corner.

In physician’s jargon,  this book is about the pathogenesis and pathophysiology of the financial tsunami: from the development of Credit Default Swap, the application of the Gaussian copula function for risk estimation, the rise of subprime mortgage, to the intrinsic defect of credit rating.

I may not agree with everything the author says about the problem of a free market, but I must take my hat off and salute his clear and meticulous way of explaining the financial system in layman’s language.