Credit Bubble Books

As I mentioned above I created this lens to help people better understand how and why we had an economic meltdown in the fall of 2008. I understand why #OccupyWallStreet is angry and why they are demonstrating but, in my opinion, Wall Street is hardly the only guilty party. To be perfectly honest I was angry, very angry, about how TARP was mishandled which is why, in June 2010, I started doing some serious research on how this could actually happen. The net result was a much deeper understanding of causes. I personally believe that this was a very ugly confluence of greed and stupidity, perpetrated by many different groups including but not limited to; Congress, the White House, various Federal regulatory agencies, crooked mortgage providers, a lazy media and too many real estate consumers who thought they were outsmarting everyone else. Think whatever you want but I truly believe there was an overall cultural disconnect from financial reality.

The core of this lens includes lists of books that give you insights on what happened, why it happened and net results are from many different perspectives. I also have links to various YouTube videos to remind us of how crazy it got in the fall of 2008. People have a short memory and a little reminder is not a bad thing. There are links to a couple of reality based blogs that are focused on our current financial world. I will add more as time goes on. This lens includes RSS feeds from various media organizations focused on current events and current financial events. I am also referencing various Wikipedia articles to give you some background information. As a country and a culture we need to understand more about how our financial system works so we can work to lower the probability of this type of event happening again.

For the record, under no circumstance am I presenting myself as an expert on finance, economics or politics. I consider myself a student who is passing on what he has learned. This, for me is an ongoing process. There are Wikipedia backgrounders on financial derivatives, CDO's (Collateralized Debt Obligations) and CDS's (Credit Default Swaps). Those three subjects are covered in the context of the meltdown in many of the books presented by people with infinitely more expertise than I have. This lens will evolve, change and grow over time. Intelligent, adult feedback and suggestions are more than welcome in the Reader Feedback module at the bottom of the lens.

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