Fiscal Whazzat?
Thursday, September 18th, 2008 04:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jesse_the_kThe current economic mess is comprehensible, as long as the folks explaining are clever enough.
The 60-minute radio show "The Big Pool of Money" explains why subprime mortgages got popular with bankers and borrowers, with the amusing style This American Life is famous for. Many factors are involved, but the biggest was "the triumph of data over common sense" and peer pressure: 1000s of bankers knowing they were doing the wrong thing, but they couldn't resist the profit. It also explains how investment banks are different than "real" banks, and why they're probably going to disappear R.S.N.
For ongoing coverage, I've been following National Public Radio's Planet Money blog. It's updated many times a day by NPR's economic correspondents. You can listen to all the reports that have aired on NPR's programs; they also have an audio Q&A section where they field listeners' questions.
Of course, NPR is not a neutral source of information, but their coverage has, so far, assumes the audience are not earning more than US$150,000 annually. Tell me about other helpful info sources!
The 60-minute radio show "The Big Pool of Money" explains why subprime mortgages got popular with bankers and borrowers, with the amusing style This American Life is famous for. Many factors are involved, but the biggest was "the triumph of data over common sense" and peer pressure: 1000s of bankers knowing they were doing the wrong thing, but they couldn't resist the profit. It also explains how investment banks are different than "real" banks, and why they're probably going to disappear R.S.N.
For ongoing coverage, I've been following National Public Radio's Planet Money blog. It's updated many times a day by NPR's economic correspondents. You can listen to all the reports that have aired on NPR's programs; they also have an audio Q&A section where they field listeners' questions.
Of course, NPR is not a neutral source of information, but their coverage has, so far, assumes the audience are not earning more than US$150,000 annually. Tell me about other helpful info sources!