Posted by Kevin Anderson

I meant to post this yesterday after listening to This American Life’s episode dissecting the global credit crisis: The Giant Pool of Money, and now with Jeff Jarvis’ praise, I know I’m not the only one who thinks that this was a stellar example of good journalism.

Last week in Princeton, we talked about what makes good journalism, what is the difference between information and journalism. Listen to this episode, and I think it’s clear. They tracked major events over the last seven years that brought us to this point and made sense of global capital markets in a way that I just haven’t seen or heard done. They also brought human voices to the story that showed a great deal of nuance and some of the choices that were made by bankers, mortgage brokers and home owners. They also told the story in an engaging, compelling way that held my attention for the entire hour. If you want to know how we got to where we are now, listen to this. It’s an hour well spent.

Oh, who’s Nina? No income, no asset mortgages or what one of the interviewees called ‘a liar’s loan’. The programme explains how Nina was born, the messages from the market that encouraged these loans. It’s a complex story but told so lucidly that you might just understand global finance after it’s done.