beginner’s guide to understanding the financial crisis

I’ve been doing a lot of reading and research for my UROP lately on the higher level picture of how the economy has disintegrated into its current state, and the  implications for legal reform that we can perhaps take away from the situation. I quickly realized that while NYT and WSJ articles are great at telling you up to date facts about what happened, they are rather shallow in terms of going into the details of why decisions were made the way they were and helping readers understand how the various headlines interconnect with how the economy is set up to ultimately result in where we are today.  More comprehensive resources would be especially useful to a lot of students and non-industry people out there who are looking to understand the crisis beyond just knowing what happened.

1. The Baseline Scenario: This is a great blog to follow for people at all levels of understanding about the financial crisis. They tend to cover one or two of the biggest stories of the day in a more explanatory style. Their beginners page is a good choice for where to start wrapping your head around these issues and terms floating around.

2.

Nice overview if you really have no idea what is going on, and need to explain it tomorrow in an interview.  Also helpful for relatives / friends who want to get caught up to date.

I will add to this as I stumble across more nice, basic resources. Feel free to suggest some if you know of any!