Boomerang

Michael Lewis' latest book "Boomerang:Travels in the New Third World" is a fascinating journey through collapsed and collapsing economies. Lewis' writing is insightful, funny, and easy to read. For Iceland, he asks why a country such as Iceland would think that global finance would have the same rules as fishing for cod or why the Irish would think that selling and reselling Irish real estate to themselves at ever greater prices was going to work out. It ends with California, a state and a set of people addicted to buying things that they can't afford. Great read.

P.S. A nickel is worth $0.06 in metal content. A guy in Texas bought 20,000,000 of them as an investment. When the bank asked him why, he said, "I like nickels."