Yaicha

Like many people, I’ve been somewhat unclear exactly how we ended up with such a mess in the mortgage and housing market. I certainly grasped the broad outlines — people got greedy and made loans to people who never should have gotten them because those loaning the money knew they were going to sell those risky mortgages to others. But why did this happen now, and just how in the world did all the pieces fall in place to create this disaster?

Well, good old NPR has explained it all, clearly and simply. Take an hour to listen to this episode of This American Life and you’ll understand it, too: The Giant Pool of Money. It’s not only educational, it’s entertaining, too, as they have interviewed the people who actually made the loans and bundled the  mortgages into securities. They’ve asked the questions we all want to ask, such as “What were you thinking?!”