Whoops! Why everyone owes everyone and no one can pay

We are, to use a technical economic term, screwed. The cowboy capitalists had a party with everyone's money and now we're all paying for it. What went wrong? And will we learn our lesson - or just carry on as before, like celebrating surviving a heart attack with a packet of Rothmans? If you want to know, but are the sort of person who finds it hard to tell the difference between a CDO, a CDS, an MBS, and a toasted cheese sandwich, John Lanchester has mastered the finer points of finance so you don't have to. In Whoops he explains, in language everyone can understand, what really happened - and what on earth we do next.