This nifty little video provides a good breakdown of what went down and why.

Basically, it boils down to what we all suspected: grossly irresponsible lending brought about by deregulation.
It seems so obvious in retrospect.
(h/t: The Crisis of Credit)

So, what caused the current financial crisis? No, not the specific events but rather the underlying cause, the cultural fault. David Brooks believes there are two competing schools of thought. It’s the greed theory vs. the stupidity theory.
Brooks begins with the greed theory:
[T]he U.S. financial crisis is a bigger version of the crises that [...]

And after the AIG mess, I say we give it to him. How we allowed one company to take down the entire system still feels unreal to me. How on earth could we allow that to go down? Crazy, crazy, crazy.
But it did happen and we are suffering massive fallout as a result, so we [...]

Krugman doesn’t like it because it doesn’t punish the behavior that got us into this mess in the first place. And while I have a soft spot in my heart for that line of reasoning, his idea of nationalizing the banks is a non-starter. I wish he realized that, but nonetheless.
Marron makes the point that [...]

If you thought $700 billion was a lot of money, well..
It is.
But $2 trillion is.. ridiculous.

This is Danielle Ivory from ANP.
Congress and the new administration have been focusing their attention on strengthening oversight for the Treasury’s TARP program, but meanwhile few are paying any attention to the Federal Reserve.
Since September, [...]

Hi, this is Danielle Ivory from the American News Project. My colleague, Lagan Sebert, and I just published a new video on the bailout and a lack of serious oversight.
Today, Henry Paulson urged Congress to release the second half of the $700 billion of the bailout money. But no one seems know what banks [...]

How do you make $50 billion disappear (other than by giving it to AIG)? Well, longtime investment manager Bernard Madoff has done just that. And now he’s under arrest.
Madoff, the former chairman on the NASDAQ, is accused of running a Ponzi scheme with his hedge fund that has cost investors as much as $50 billion [...]

The week has started well for world markets as stock exchanges across the globe have rallied or are rallying to post significant gains. The increases are attributed to the coordinated global efforts to unfreeze credit markets, particularly the European Union’s and the United Kingdom’s decisions to fully back bank accounts and infuse troubling banks with [...]

Christopher Hitchens thinks so.
It’s all about kleptocratic business leaders, weak-willed politicians and the complete absence of accountability for the empowered class.
Just a taste:
Now ask yourself another question. Has anybody resigned, from either the public or the private sectors (overlapping so lavishly as they now do)? Has anybody even offered to resign? Have you heard [...]

The global economic troubles worsened today as major markets around the world have fallen 6-10%. The situation has deteriorated to the point that the world’s financial ministers and central bankers will meet in Washington this weekend in an attempt to coordinate a global response.
Unfortunately, no one really knows what will calm global markets. On the [...]

Another bad day for Wall Street as the Dow lost 7% and fell below 9,000.
Since a year ago today, the Dow has shed 39% of its value.
It’s not pretty out there.

A few weeks ago I decided that I’m just going to throw away my next IRA statement without opening it. This is looking like a better and better idea.
Apparently, American retirement plans have lost $2 trillion over the last 15 months. That’s 20 percent of their value. And that doesn’t include what people [...]

I suppose it would have been nice if the $700 billion bailout was the magic bullet needed to right our economic ship. But after today’s tumult on Wall Street, it’s pretty clear we’re not out the woods.
At one point today, the Dow was down 800 points, but managed to close “just” 370 points down. How [...]

Here’s an interesting fact pulled from the AP about the bailout bill’s failure:
Thirteen of the 19 most vulnerable Republicans and Democrats in an Associated Press analysis voted against the bill despite the pleas from President Bush and their party leaders to pass it.
The article doesn’t say who these 19 are but this figure tells us [...]

The more I read on the current financial crisis and the more I think about the ramifications, the more I realize that September 2008 will probably have as much of a lasting effect on our nation as has September 2001. That’s because what we’ve witnessed is not just a political failure and not just a [...]

Big thanks to Jimmy for this.

| View | Upload your own

The text may be hard to read, so I’d suggest just going full screen with it. It’s very easy to read at that size.