This American Life #382: "The Watchmen" (2009)
posted by Gavin | 9:59 PM
3.5/4
I occasionally listen to "This American Life", a radio show and podcast from Chicago. They had a recent episode about the watchmen, the regulators and others involved in the recent economy woes. Explaining it in plain english. If you're curious and want to actually understand it, I think it's well worth your time.
What I found most interesting, and most relevant to current events, is the discussion of how fiscal regulation currently works and, in particular, how steps taken by various Congresses and administrations since the Savings & Loans scandals in the 1980s led up to this situation.
Plus, they open with Battlestar Galactica music (from Season 1 premiere), how can't it be good?
I occasionally listen to "This American Life", a radio show and podcast from Chicago. They had a recent episode about the watchmen, the regulators and others involved in the recent economy woes. Explaining it in plain english. If you're curious and want to actually understand it, I think it's well worth your time.
What I found most interesting, and most relevant to current events, is the discussion of how fiscal regulation currently works and, in particular, how steps taken by various Congresses and administrations since the Savings & Loans scandals in the 1980s led up to this situation.
Plus, they open with Battlestar Galactica music (from Season 1 premiere), how can't it be good?
Labels: current events
5 Comments:
very interesting transcipt!
very interesting transcipt!
woops, posted that too soon.
First off I'm glad that had nothing to do with the actual watchmen movie.
Not sure why they chose to make a big deal about the rating system. The ratings reacted when the models said things were bad for those particular investments. The alternative, to withhold rating changes based on percieved impact to the economy would be criminal and impossible to predict. After that it degrades into a "gee whiz ratings are looked at by alot of poeople" type of thing. And there are tons of other analysis groups assigning influences besides those letter scores. The fact so many companies took a dive in score is not the ratings fault, it was just the economy falling apart for a bit.
Besides, the ratings were just a confirming cue when things really started to go down the rabbit hole.
I heard this - not once, but twice on the radio. I enjoyed it.
Like JP, I have noticed that ratings - not for all these bonds - but for stocks, tend to trail stock price by a little bit. Though I haven't looked at risk ratings - just performance ratings.
Check out "The Giant Pool of Money" on thisamericanlife.org - it talks about the problems in mortgages and such. There is a econ. tab that features the shows they have produced about the economy.
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