We tend to think of the United States as a country that operates at a rather faster pace than our own: full of bustling people in a hurry to make money, or to create ingenious ways for others to lose it. In many areas of life that characterisation is accurate, but in journalism it is not.

Magazines like the New Yorker or Vanity Fair are happy to give writers several pages and many thousands of words with which to develop their thoughts. Five thousand words is a mere diary item in an upmarket American magazine. If I suggested a piece of that length to the editor of this esteemed journal, he would instantly reach for a blank P45. (Too right, Ed.)

This prolixity is not always a good thing. The New Yorker is often quite unreadable, and indeed unread. But the best American 'colour' writers ply an elegant trade long forgotten over here. Michael Lewis is one such. The author of Liar's Poker, Moneyball and most recently The Big Short, about the New York hedgies who made a mint out of the crisis, he has turned his attention to the fate of the states left nursing millennial hangovers as the crisis rolled on - those that, in Warren Buffett's memorable phrase, were found to have been swimming naked when the tide went out.

At Vanity Fair's expense, Lewis visited Iceland, Greece, Ireland and California, all places that succumbed to the temptations of the borrowing boom, to inspect the wreckage now that the debts have to be repaid.

As a kind of control sample, he also spent time in Germany. This chapter is by far the least successful. He becomes preoccupied by what he sees as the German obsession with faeces and mud-wrestling. Though he does explain clearly why the Germans have played so hard to get when it comes to rescuing the Greeks from their folly, the rest of it is, not to put too fine a point on it, crap.

The balance, however, is a very superior form of journalism. Lewis wears his opinions on his sleeve, which is not a bad place for them. He thinks the Icelanders, or at least male Icelandic bankers, lost the plot in the early years of this century and destroyed a happy little economy with their greed and foolishness. It is hard to disagree. Anyone who went to Reykjavik during that period, as I did, could hardly fail to be bemused as to how the country had apparently become so rich, so quickly. In some ways, it is reassuring to find that it was all built on sand, or should we say snow?

In Ireland, he is exasperated by the lack of outrage on the part of the population towards their bankers, who dragged the economy down with their hubris, and in relation to the politicians who decided that the banks, and those feckless lenders who funded them in the markets, should be fully guaranteed. That fateful decision by Brian Lenihan saddled the population with debts it will take decades to redeem. There is a touch of Irish whimsy in the writing - all Americans are guilty of it - but the story rings true.

In California, he goes for an early-morning bike ride with Arnold Schwarzenegger in Santa Monica, not something for the faint-hearted, it would seem. Arnold burns red lights and performs as if on the last stage of the Tour de France. Perhaps it is inevitable if you go pedal to pedal with someone for many miles, but Lewis ends up strangely sympathetic to the Terminator, who failed to persuade the Californian voters that the party was over and they needed to pay a few taxes. The consequences may now be seen in the form of cities with barely any public employees, decaying infrastructure and a struggling university system.

Sympathy is, however, in short supply when Lewis visits Greece. He gives the finance minister Giorgos Papaconstantinou a fair hearing, mentioning his education at the London School of Economics as a positive point in his favour (though failing to point out that he, Lewis, is an alumnus also).

But his conclusion is that Greek society is beyond repair. In the public sector, 'where waste ends and theft begins almost doesn't matter; the one masks and thus enables the other. It's simply assumed, for instance, that anyone who is working for the government is meant to be bribed.' He talks to tax inspectors who blew the whistle on their corrupt superiors and were fired for their pains, rapacious monks who took the government for a ride with dubious property deals. He explains how almost all Greek doctors should be in jail for reporting implausibly low incomes. He grants that Papandreou's government had been 'resolved to at least try to re-create Greek public life', but he is sceptical of its chances of success and rightly so, as it has now turned out.

Boomerang is not a wholly reliable source. There are mistakes and exaggerations. Lewis is not a neutral witness. But he writes quite brilliantly and understands the complex financial matters whereof he speaks. As polemical prose goes, it is hard to beat.

 

Boomerang: The Meltdown Tour Michael Lewis

Allen Lane £20.00

- Howard Davies is a non-executive director of Morgan Stanley and was founding chairman of the Financial Services Authority

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