From The New West Blog: Housing Trouble News

This American Life: Who Caused the Credit Crunch, and Who Got Crunched

By Robert Struckman, 5-15-08

This week’s hour-long radio show “This American Life” will take you in with one of the best business stories, ever. Period.

The housing crisis? The credit crunch? What do they have to do with each other?

The Giant Pool of Money takes you step-by-step down the chain of the housing troubles. Here’s the kicker: The reporters at This American Life and National Public Radio, which partnered on the story, interviewed a bartender-turned-mortgage lender who lent money to people who couldn’t pay it back, mortgage brokers who packaged and sold the worthless loans to Wall Street and the investors who bought those notes. They talk about how great it was during the boom, and how they knew in their hearts that it would all come crashing down.

The reporting is just phenomenal. This isn’t some big impersonal business story with no relevance to your life. This is real people. This is a global crisis brought on by professionals gone amuck, who did stupid things and who knew better.

As with the best reporting, the voices here will remain with you. You’ll listen and read with interest the ongoing news into efforts to hold responsible the principals of this debacle, such as lawsuits filed against and federal and state investigations into the practices of Countrywide Financial Corp., the nation’s largest mortgage lender.

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