I’ve read many stories about how we got into the current financial crisis. However, there is a series that Ira Glass is producing for NPR’s This American Life that tells the story in much more understandable, insightful, and entertaining terms than I’ve seen anywhere else. I would encourage you to check out the following programs, which you can either download as transcripts or you can stream them to your computer:
The Giant Pool Of Money – May 9, 2008
This Peabody Award winning show explains how Wall Street and homeowners are connected by a chain of middlemen and tap into a giant global pool of money and how this setup led to the current crisis.
Who was minding the store when all this was going on? This show is very interesting in that it connects events that took place in the 1930s with today’s events and it becomes clear that for every fix the government can come up with there are eventually unintended consequences down the road.