{"href":"https://api.simplecast.com/oembed?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcode-curiosities.simplecast.com%2Fepisodes%2Fthe-spreadsheet-that-crashed-an-economy-RLD1XM6g","width":444,"version":"1.0","type":"rich","title":"The Spreadsheet That Crashed an Economy","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_url":"https://image.simplecastcdn.com/images/96a10b54-3566-4ae1-87fd-fd8bff7bd182/bfe23177-168e-4560-8f89-ca617c79586a/code-20curiosities.jpg","thumbnail_height":300,"provider_url":"https://simplecast.com","provider_name":"Simplecast","html":"<iframe src=\"https://player.simplecast.com/bd6c3e72-c9a1-4489-838e-38c6b0565c15\" height=\"200\" width=\"100%\" title=\"The Spreadsheet That Crashed an Economy\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"></iframe>","height":200,"description":"In 2010, two Harvard economists published a paper claiming that once a country's debt crosses 90% of GDP, economic growth collapses — and governments worldwide used it to justify years of brutal austerity cuts. The only problem? A grad student doing his homework found a typo in a single Excel formula that had quietly excluded five countries from the dataset. We dig into how one bad cell reference helped reshape the lives of millions of people who never touched a spreadsheet in their lives."}