Visualizing the Credit Crisis

by Matt Martin | 1 Comment

These videos are amazing.  Seriously, take a few minutes to watch them; even if they are a bit oversimplyfied, the visual style is kind of hypnotizing.

Part 1:

Part 2

February 19, 2009, 4:35 pm | Category: Misc. National Politics |

1 Responses to “Visualizing the Credit Crisis”

Feed for this Entry Trackback Address
  • Kerosene Hat
    February 20, 2009 at 10:23 am

    That is more or less it. Interest rates lower than the real rate of inflation means investors of any type have to put their money into relatively risky places for their investments to not loose real value. This American Life did a great piece on it a number of months ago.

    Keeping the interest rates low and pumping more money into the system by increasing the debt will at best delay the point at which we bottom out while at the same time making the bottom ever lower.

    The attempt to stave of a recession after the dot-com bust and again after 9-11 by lowering interest rates to encourage increased consumption is a root cause of our current trouble. It isn’t simply how much is spent but what it is spent on. The easy credit caused people to spend to much on on useless crap which encouraged businesses to produce more useless crap. Now that the credit is dried up the entire economy has to shift back to making things which actually add value.

    The fact that we seem to be continuing with the policies that got us here is complete nonsense. Everybody seems concerned with only the symptoms and not the cause. You can not borrow your way out of a debt/credit problem. The policies we have followed for decades are simply not sustainable.

Leave a Reply