Thing 65 - It's hard to think about anything else

I was curious about exactly why the US was teetering on the brink of depression and why (or how) the US economy had got itself into this position.

I started with the msnbc timeline - reasonably good but it did seem to assume some knowledge that i didn't have.

I then moved onto how stuff works - this was an excellent explanation of mortgage backed securities - how they work and what happens when home loans are defaulted on in record numbers. It also helped me understand the msnbc timeline a little better.

I finished up with kiplinger.com's 15 things you need to know about the panic of 2008.

Of the three - I found how stuff works to be the most useful for a non-us reader - I understood it all a lot better after that. (and some of the stuff I heard on the business news this morning suddenly makes a lot more sense.)