Credit crunch, sub-prime mortgage, collateralised debt obligations… Obscure terms that now feature in everyday pub chatter, even more so after this week’s spectacular events involving the collapse of investment banks, unprecedented interventions by governments and a looming global economic downturn. But can you, hand on heart, say that you understand what the credit crunch really is, and where it came from and who’s to blame?
Fear not, for the brilliant radio series This American Life aired a superb hour-long documentary that tells the story of the US sub-prime mortgage bubble and bust as I’ve never heard it told before. From the people who were there, from the Wall Street bankers at the very top to the no income no asset borrowers at the very bottom. And all the middle-men in between. It’s a very human story of hope, greed, hubris and self-delusion.
The Giant Pool of Money show is highly recommended, not just as an explanation of the core cause of the seismic events of this week, but as an example of public service documentary radio at its very best. And it’s not just me that thinks so, according to the programme-makers it’s been listened to online by more than half a million people. It’s still available to listen again online. If you need any convincing, check out the first five mintes, on the link below:
Update: The success of The Giant Pool of Money has apparently led to National Public Radio launching a new podcast and blog about the global economy, called Planet Money. It’s presented by Adam Davidson from NPR (who worked with TAL’s Alex Blumberg on The Giant Pool of Money). Both men rank up there with Evan Davis of the BBC in terms of talent at explaining what the hell is going on out there in the miasma of global financial markets and relating it to real day-to-day economics. In just its first week the show has already featured some excellent guests and if they keep up this level of quality, Planet Money will find a regular spot on my weekly diet of podcasts.
Along with the exhibitions, talks, guided walks, debates and parties there is a series of excellent architectural podwalks produced by Ruby Wright. I did one about my neighbourhood, entitled ‘Backstreets of Southwark’. It was featured on BBC Radio 4’s iPM programme on 14 June.
The walk passes both cutting edge and utilitarian architecture, secret pocket parks, an unconsecrated boneyard where 15,000 people lie buried, the wine bar where local magistrates go after hard day on the bench, the remains of the debtors prison where Charles Dickens’s father was banged up in 1824 and much more.
It’s about 2 miles long and starts and finishes at Southwark tube station, on the Jubilee Line. A map of the route (including a GPX trace) is over here.
Download including various file formats (128kb MP3, 64kb MP3, Ogg Vorbis) from here.
British campaigners against European Union plans to outlaw imperial measures like pounds and ounces have claimed victory, according to news reports today. The self-styled ‘metric martyrs’ say they have say they have won the battle to keep Britain imperial, after confirmation from the European Commission’s industry commissioner, Gunther Verheugen, that dual marking of goods in imperial and metric would “continue indefinitely”. Previously the Commission had set a 2009 deadline for the phasing out of imperial measures still widely used in British greengrocers, butchers and supermarkets. (more…)
It must be frustrating being the President of the European Commission: a whole lot of responsibility but very little power. When Jose Manuel Barroso meets George W Bush at the White House next week he may be able to offer some advice to a US President who has just lost control of Congress and is watching his Iraq strategy slip further into chaos.
On the agenda is climate change, international security and global trade. Bush is currently the world’s leading climate change denier and the chances of him recanting are as good as those of snowball in hell - or the polar ice caps, the way things are going. On international security, the EU lacks a standing army and even a foreign minister, so Barroso has very little to offer here. It is only trade policy that the two men can use this high level meeting to achieve something concrete: sealing a deal that has so far eluded their respective trade negotiators at the WTO in Geneva. Presidential ‘fast track’ Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) will expire in a matter of months, and so if there is to be a deal on Bush’s watch, it needs to be made now. (more…)
Nick Cohen writes in The Observer about the unwillingness of the British government to do something about tax avoidance by the super-rich, which he sees as “debauching British society”. Meanwhile new figures from the TUC show that since 2000 the pay of company executives has increased 17 times faster than average pay. It is true that the overall effect of tax and benefit changes made by Labour since 1997 has been to redistribute money from the rich to the poor, but it has not been sufficient to prevent a widening of the gap nor to outlaw the worst excesses of boardroom greed. (more…)
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