Financial Planning Blog

Some great reporting on the economic crisis over the last year has come from an unlikely source. Many of you are familiar with “This American Life,” the quirky radio show on NPR that generally features a set of stories around a unifying theme. When you try to describe the show to someone, it always sounds extremely boring, but it can actually be incredibly captivating. Who better to tackle the job of explaining how mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps have brought the free world to its knees? Who better to make the “dismal science” cool?

The initial show “The Giant Pool of Money” from May, 2008 won the prestigious Peabody and duPont-Columbia awards for journalism. The Columbia Journalism School’s website described the show as “A story about the beginnings of the economic collapse told in a way that makes a complex story accessible to a wide radio and web audience. Ahead of many journalists, reporters Alex Blumberg and Adam Davidson gave an outstanding and occasionally irreverent explanation about the current financial crisis in April 2008, months before the global economy began to unravel. Through terrific storytelling and economic insight, the reporters demystify the subprime mortgage meltdown using personal stories to explain terms such as derivatives, tranches, short selling and credit swaps." Obviously a lot has happened since this show originally aired, but it is still worth listening to. After all, it’s not as if we know how the story ends.

The show was so popular it was followed by two more excellent programs. In early October, as things really started falling apart, there was “Another Frightening Show About the Economy”. In February, 2009 “Bad Bank” aired. During this time the NPR crew (Blumberg, Davidson, and others) started up the Planet Money podcast with more down-to-earth explanations of our extremely complex economy. Once you come to grips with the fact that you are listening to an economics podcast from NPR, it’s generally pretty entertaining.