Following This American Life’s extraordinarily well-received Giant Pool of Money episode, comes another look at the factors involved in the recent FUBAR’ing of the financial system. This episode focuses on:
[T]he 36-hour period, two weeks ago, when the credit markets froze. Plus, what it’s like now for businesses to get short-term loans, and how the hardship is spreading to every sector of the economy.
[ . . . ]
[On the topic of “credit default swaps”], the show talks with Michael Greenberger, a former commodities regulator, who tells the story of when it was decided not to regulate credit default swaps. And how that decision was emblematic of the way we didn’t regulate a lot of the toxic financial products we’re hearing about now.
[ . . . ]
Was the $700 billion bailout bill signed into law today a good idea or a bad one?
I haven’t heard the show myself, yet*, but it’s been very well received by a number of people that I respect. You can download it for free here. (It’s free to listen to at the site anytime, and free to download as an MP3 until the end of this week.)
*I was driving through a part of Massachusetts when it aired. I never would have guessed that there was a a part of Massachusetts that didn’t receive NPR.