How To Speak Money
What the money people say – and what they really mean
John Lanchester
Having read it
★★★★☆
Another brilliant book by John Lanchester, who knows his stuff and demonstrates that certainly in its afterword.
It can all seem a bit downcast in its outlook but, it uses reality and facts to explain the whys and wherefores and the inequalities, across many levels, that we’re all dealing with.
It also explains the potentials, in a relatively constructive yet vague and simple way that potentially could plot and guide a more progressive and exclusive economic model, (which seems to be sort of happening).
Neoliberalism is over, albeit still in its confusing, end-of-life phase, with its ‘old’ guard aiming to squeeze every last ounce of life (and money!) out of it!
A good passage
We can use our new vocabulary to discuss food or wine with other people, to enter a dialogue with anyone. This is the social aspect of food language, and it’s very powerful within the community who know what they are talking about. But it’s also a potential problem. The words and references are only of value to people who’ve had the same experiences and use the same vocabulary: you’re referring to a shared basis of sensory experience and a shared language. People who don’t have those things are likely to think you are producing the thing which smells like Shiraz, and they don’t mean it as praise. This is the loss involved in learning about taste: as you learn more about the match between tastes and language, you risk talking to fewer and fewer people – the people who know what these taste-references actually mean. As your vocabulary becomes more specific, more useful, more effective, it also biomes more exclusive. You are talking to a smaller audience.
The language of money works like that too. It is powerful and efficient, but it is also both exclusive and excluding.
A second good passage
bail-in – [...] Some people are treating bail-ins as if they are the end of life as we know it, but the principle is a simple and fairly well-understood one: if you lend money to somebody who goes broke, you don’t get all of it back. If lenders have to think about the risk they’re taking when they lend money to a bank, they will want better levels of return for their risk, which will reduce the bank’s profits. Banks would prefer not to be treated this way: for them it’s much more pleasant and profitable if, when they go broke, the taxpayer bails them out instead.
A third good passage
In the meantime, it may be that we have to settle for a world which is mainly getting richer, whose citizens are living longer and whose richest countries are enjoying slower growth, but also a more equal, more satisfying, more mindful way of life. When people say ‘It can’t go on like this’, what usually happens is that it does go on like that, more extendedly and more painfully than anyone could possibly imagine; it happens in relationships, in jobs, in entire countries. It goes way, way past the point of bearability. And then things suddenly and abruptly change. I think that’s where we are today.