I know I’m not alone in feeling like I understand about 35% of what’s going on on Wall Street these days. (And yes, I recognize that this 35% number is surely hubris; it must be more like 8%.) For those of you who want a bit of a primer, take a look at Steven Levitt’s post at the Times’ Freakonomics page. He enlists the intellect of Doug Diamond and Anil Kashyap to give some very helpful pointers.
If we’re going through 1929 Redux, it would be awful nice to have at least a minimal understanding of what’s going on!
Read Kevin Phillips' books, especially the latest (Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism, 2008), for the big and rather disturbing picture that few national politicians of either party appear able to understand or to talk truthfully about.