Help for understanding to current financial crisis

If you are like me at all then you might have some understanding of what connects the crash of wall street to mortgages on main street. But my understanding ended with the basic connections of mortgage lending and wall street deregulation. I surely didn't come to any understanding of why we are in the situation we are in, which is important. Surely, I think we all agree that we don't want to see fat-cat financial people ride the bailout and get more rich on the crushed backs of main street folks who are sitting under the weight of unmanageable prime rate mortgages!

(Read the rest of this below before watching the video)



Lately I have heard politicians from every side of these issues say that we shouldn't worry about pointing fingers but rather get down to solving this. I would mostly agree with that, the point being that first and foremost we should be trying to solve the problem. But the fact remains that we need to understand the problem to find our way out of it. I think most would agree. Pointing the finger is only as relevant as the likely hood that the same players would do the same thing again. In that case, it is worth knowing who the players are and what they did.

This video I am including here outlines the causes of the crisis and doesn't oversimplify the nature of it (as you can imagine this has been on the brew for some time now.) In fact recently a number of analysts are saying that the "bubble burst" about a year and a half ago, but this is such a large bubble that we are only now JUST BEGINNING to feel the outcome of it.

As an interesting side note, we can now see without a doubt that we live in a global economy. Markets across the planet are crashing with the exception of the Asian markets and that is largely due to a combination of global market factor like competitiveness as well as directly connected market factors, like trade. As an American, I can say that one thing about this crisis is true. The government bailout only takes the gears of the financial machine our of virtual gridlock. It is the average main street American that still has to make good decisions to invest in our economy over the next years to see us climb out of this hole we are in.

Check out the video. I think it will be enlightening. (I am sure there will be other videos that more people will make.) Thanks Jeff, for pointing me toward this video. I think that it is the most complete summary to date.