I've just finished reading "Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World" by Michael Lewis, a follow-up to "The Big Short". It's an enlightening and sobering read

I've just finished reading "Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World" by Michael Lewis, a follow-up to "The Big Short". It's an enlightening and sobering read as it shows how destructive the temptation of cheap money (i.e., debt) was to Iceland, Greece, Ireland, Germany and the U.S. from 2001 through 2008. More importantly, he shows how radically differently the three member countries of the Euro zone he profiles (Ireland, Greece, Germany) mis-handled that temptation, and it does not bode well for the survival of the Euro, or even the EU. My own personal belief is that the Euro zone will disintegrate within months, if not weeks, and the fallout will not be pretty. (BTW, Lewis profiles Kyle Bass, a hedge fund manager from Texas throughout Boomerang. Check out what he has to say on YouTube. It's very scary stuff.) Financially there are really no safe havens. The U.S. is only able to run up trillion dollar annual deficits because its currency is the default reserve currency for the world and for now investors put up with sub 2% returns over 10 years (!) because they see no real alternatives. Canada and Australia have ridden commodity booms to blow up their property markets to massive bubbles that will crash hard. And the financial end game will play out soon for Japan as it has unsustainable debt levels. To date it has managed to fund those deficits internally, but it has almost saturated its domestic debt markets, and as soon as it has to start issuing debt on the international markets, it's game over. Although the financial causes for this monetary crisis appear to be complex, IMO at heart the reason is very simple: You cannot expect to live beyond your means indefinitely and get away with it.