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If you’re having a hard time making sense of the very, very scary news coming out of Wall Street — and who isn’t? —- we direct you to an episode of the always excellent This American Life that we shouted out a few months back which explained very simply the housing crisis and how we got to this point.
Also. Say someone were selling you a shirt, you bought the shirt, only that shirt you were buying was never, ever in their possession, and so they couldn’t actually give you the shirt — even though you paid for it. Oh, and they still kept the money. (I know: WTF, right?) Well, that happens all the time with stocks on Wall Street — it’s called “naked short-selling“ — and even though it strikes you and me as dumb and unethical and just a bad move in general — it’s completely legal and above board. (Fam, I know: WTF, right?) That very common practice played a big role in making the markets so unstable. Again, Alex Blumberg explains all.
Also, also. Daily Intelligencer has a simple breakdown of the government’s nationalization of assistance to AIG, the biggest insurer in the country which was on the hook for all the bad debt out there from this mess, and why the government didn’t throw a lifeline to other Wall Street titans in dire straits.
