How did we get here?
The public radio show, This American Life, has broadcast two excellent episodes that really help explain, in an easy to follow way, what’s happened over the past several years in the mortgage and financial industries to bring us to the present “credit crisis”.
If you have any questions about how sub-prime loans became so rampant, or what Credit Default Swaps (CDS) or Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO) are, or anything related to any of that, listen to these shows.
Here’s the first episode, which was originally broadcast in May, called The Giant Pool of Money. If you’re on a Mac (not sure if this works on Windows with iTunes installed), you can click here to go directly to iTunes to purchase the program. This one costs 95¢.
Here’s the second episode, from October 3rd, called Another Frightening Show About the Economy. This one is offered as a free mp3 download.
Each of these episodes is an hour long. And though they do make it relatively easy to understand what happened and what’s going on, you do have to pay attention. That is, you can’t just listen to it in the background and expect to learn anything. Well, at least I couldn’t.
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Did you watch the Dancing with the Stars elimination show? Draaammaaa!
I just HATE that guy with the accent on Survivor, he thinks he knows everything and is soooooo mean to that one girl. That isn’t fair!
I cannot WAIT for American Idol to start this January. I am bummed that America’s Got Talent is over. :(
Ok, new rule for voting. In addition to being a U.S. citizen, in order to vote, you have to be able to describe, in general, what a Credit Default Swap is. Alternatively, you have to name at least three previous winners of American Idol.