Like most of us other I am completely in the fog as to what is *really* going on with our economy right now. We just gave 700,000,000,000 of our tax dollars away to try and help the situation and I have no idea if it was the right thing to do.  I have my roommate Rory (who saves like no one else I know) and my buddy Jim (who's trying to find a good lender for college loans) shouting doom and gloom to any ear that will listen, other friends saying it's nothing to worry about... it's just the fat cats screwing up, and the mass media saying this is a start of the next depression.

About the clearest explanation I've heard yet was from the folks up in Chicago at This American Life in a special they did with NPR's Alex Blumberg and Adam Davidson titled The Giant Pool of Money. I highly recommend listening to it for free (see the Full Episode link on on the page). I was pointed to this just a month or so ago when trying to find out more information the then pending Bailout. Today a friend of mine, Sascha Meinrath, Tweeted about their follow up segment  titled Another Frightening Show About the Economy just in time for me to catch it on WILL 580AM. It answered a great deal many of my questions and scared the shit out of me.  Unfortunately, the Bailout has already passed and IMHO w/o some important provisions.

In their very easy and and a slightly entertaining way, Alex and Adam, put you in the know regarding what in the last 10 or so years has led us to our current problems ending with what they think about the Bail out:

This crisis is severe its going to get worse... The new plan is better, its not great but it does help.

Even with their dumbing down of whats going on for us non economist, it's easy to see that this problem is huge and has its seeds from events more than 10 years ago.  Listen to the shows, read the Bailout bill (click me to download), spend some time on google, and be more fiscially responsible.