Read Art Levine's Ecnomic Meltdown 101

My friend and Blogtalkradio co-host has put together a roundup of misery. He also posted this on huffington but it first ran on his blog.

November 17, 2008
Economic Meltdown 101: How We Got Here and How We Might Dig Ourselves Out
Here are some basic primers on the economic crisis:
This is the simplest presentation, with captioned pictures, one after the other:
here.

A clear explanation of how Fannie Mae wasn't the primary cause of the subprime crisis, but unregulated private sector loans subsequently packaged by Wall Street, has been done by McClatchy:
here.

If you hear this presentation from This American Life, or skim the transcript, it can bring home the issues home pretty clearly and in a personal way:
here.

Then here's a well-written lively overview in layman's terms:
here.


A video presentation of subprime mortgages, by PBS:, with props and an effort to make it clear:
here.

Paul Solman also uses simple cartoon images and other props to explain the screwy world of "credit default swaps" -- insurance policies on risky securities composed of risky subprime loans. Much of the world's leading economic institutions invested in assorted financial instruments that were built on the sandy of risk loans -- and no one factored in falling house prices as even a possibility.
Newsweek explains how credit default swaps became "The Monster That Ate Wall Street"

A mix of captioned pargraphs, with charts underneath, explaining how we got in this mess:
here.

Here's a detailed look in The New York Times how each deregulating or short-sighted institution and key player failed the public and the economy. Everybody with real power got it wrong, or did the wrong thing; others who tried to do the right thing were ignored or marginalized as greed and ideology triumphed:
here.

A more crisply written, anecdotal three-part series on the collapse of the subprime mortgage market and how it brought down Lehman brothers, etc was in The Washington Post in the "Bubble" series:
here.

You can keep up on economic news from a progressive perspective with Brad DeLong, among others, here:
here. And you can hear his explanation of our current crisis , the underlying shakiness of the economy, and why major domestic spending initiatives shouldn't be put off , heard in the second half hour of the "D'Antoni and Levine" radio show here, starting at 44 minutes, from mid-October:
here.

And NPR's Planet Money (useful if "objective") is also informative:, plus a daily podcast posted online:
here./

Finally, this month:
Michael Lewis takes us inside the world of those few analysts who realized what a flimsy house of mortgage-related cards the greedheads in the financial institutions had built their wealth on, how it was going to come crashing down, and few people in power bothered to listen. It's so long it's worth buying the magazine for it, but it's only for those who want a long narrative.

That's how we got here, and let's hope our leadership can dig us out.

How to get out of this mess? Read Paul Krugman , Brad DeLong, and the Center for American Progress for some sound ideas.

-- Art Levine