Bill Moyers interviews George Soros on the financial crisis. Soros discusses market fundamentalism and the causes of the current crisis, as well as what can be done, and how this meltdown will change the global economy. (via The Big Picture) [more inside]
posted by [expletive deleted] on Oct 11, 2008 - 44 comments

The Next Bubble: Priming the markets for tomorrow's big crash. A layman's primer on the genesis and future of today's economic troubles, at Harper's Magazine.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken on Mar 13, 2008 - 79 comments

Minsky Meltdown ahead? Named after Hyman Minsky, an economist who was known for his research concerning financial crises, specifically asset bubbles based on credit cycles. [much more inside]
posted by umop-apisdn on Aug 29, 2007 - 75 comments

What's the link between:
1) the quickly-growing number of American homeowners becoming unable to pay their mortgages after their ARM's reset (a trend nicknamed "ARMageddon" -- applicable in the UK too), which is translating into soaring foreclosure rates, and in turn forcing at least 60 US semi-shady mortgage brokers to go belly-up in the past year (i.e. the "subprime meltdown"), and...
2) the recent implosion and impending financial bailout -- which may become the biggest since the Long Term Capital Management fiasco of 1998 -- of two Bear Stearns hedge funds which dealt in mortgage securities? [more inside]
posted by Asparagirl on Jul 11, 2007 - 123 comments

itulip.com has returned. Back in the go-go days when Internet stocks ruled the world, iTulip was one of a very few voices warning about the Nasdaq bubble and the likely fallout. (Prudent Bear was another.) As bad as things got, the overall financial bubble never really popped, it just shifted into debt and real estate after furious slashing of interest rates and money-printing by the Fed. Financial manias are terrible; their unraveling has been compared with economic nuclear weapons. (cf: The Secret History of the South Sea Bubble [amazon book link] and the Dutch Tulip Mania.) The only good solution to a bubble is not to have one in the first place. [more inside]
posted by Malor on Mar 15, 2006 - 13 comments

This might be the only time in your life you get to hear this because the finance industry survives soley on large-scale ignorance, so listen very closely. There is NO housing bubble in the US. NEVER invest in actively managed funds. Financial lamers do better than financial jocks (and almost everyone else). .

Sadly however most of you won't have the mathematical knowledge to differentiate the advice backed by several Nobel laureates and world-renowned academics from the "advice" of any of the thousands of horny little evangelists spruking their financial "theories" for profit or fame.
posted by DirtyCreature on Jun 20, 2005 - 78 comments

A speculative bubble is created when objectivity, reasoning, and valuation give way to greed and an insatiable desire for profits. On this date in history... October 29, 1929: The date of the stock market crash that marked the start of the Great Depression in the United States. Could it have been averted by the reading of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay?
posted by puddsharp on Oct 29, 2002 - 21 comments