jr conlin's ink stained banana

Only because i've not heard a lot of folks suggesting it and only because it's really helped underline what the hell is going on with the current world economy:

1. It was billed as Another Frightening Show About the Economy, but an episode of This American Life from a few weeks back lays out clearly what the hell went wrong. Turns out, a lot of things, really, and in spite of the current environment of finger pointing, pretty much everyone had a hand in it. The sheer size of what happened pretty much ensures that. You also learn that it's not the stock market or the housing market that's the problem (although they were both symptoms and results), but the credit problem where suddenly "sure bets" weren't and folks found out that the $200 they had squirreled away in a 100% guaranteed account suddenly was only $150. Now, ramp that up by a factor of 1000 and you sorta get what the problem was.

2. Planet Money. Kind of a daily follow up on that This American Life show. Every week day, they put out a 30 minute show that described what's going on. They talk to economists, bankers, stock managers, credit managers, and pretty much everyone that has a stake in the game. You learn about why you should pay attention to Bond rates and the TED spread, what the TED spread is, and how to understand how that reflects the current thinking of the market. They take the time to explain the acronyms and jargon, and talk about what the rest of the world is doing.

The most interesting thing i've learned so far? How many physicists there are in the financial market, and how one of them may have been to blame for this whole mess. (no, it's not JIM, even though he did flee the country right before things went awry and has been awfully quiet lately.)

If you've got money, you should be listening to these.

If you think you know what's happening, you definitely need to be listening to these.