When former Treasury Secretary John Snow dropped by the Miller Center last week, he spent a couple of minutes talking about the subprime collapse and the current credit crunch. I’ve spent some time talking to some financial folks about the machinations of how this all happened, and they’ve been helpful.
But if you’re like me, it’s hard to have anything past a vague understanding of what happened and why. And that’s where This American Life comes in. No, seriously.
TAL devoted an entire hour to explaining the mortgage meltdown (can someone please come up with some other alliterative phrase to described this shit?). That it takes an entire hour to give an overview should say something about the thing.
While at the Miller Center, Snow made it clear that he doesn’t think we’re going to see an end to the correction for a long while. Not that this is going to affect the chairman of Cerberus. Unless, of course, people suddenly stop buying gas-guzzling SUVs.