...and then my head exploded.

You know, John McCain and I don't have too much in common. He has more houses than he knows...I live out of a suitcase; He has a private jet...I have a metro smart card; He thinks "The Surge" has been a success...I think that the US has killed or bought off enough people to make the statistics look better. The one thing we do have in common is that neither of us is an expert on the economy.



In the last month, I have struggled to learn as much as I possibly can about the economic crisis the world is experiencing. Derivatives, Fanny and Freddy, sub-prime, bubbles, bonds, mark to market....it all makes my head hurt. Unfortunately, the events unfolding in this country leave us little choice but to learn and learn quickly. Burying our heads in the sand can only lead to more misuse our our tax dollars, more undeserving CEOs walking off with the store and more corruption. Learning this stuff has become the job of the responsible citizen.

As much as I would prefer to spend 100% of my time working to end this horrible war and to ensure that the troops and vets are truly supported, this economic crisis seems to have it's tentacles in ever issue including the war and so learn I must.

Here's a snippet of video of our protest the day of the first bailout vote..


The BBC recently featured a "Layman's Finance Crisis Glossary" http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7642138.stm The article includes graphics and word definitions along with analysis for those of us, like me and Senator McCain, who are challenged by the topic.

In this graphic, the venn diagram gives a perspective on the size of the bailout.



The following terms are also defined in small chunks for us amateurs:
Administration
Assets
Bear market
Bond
Bull market
Capital
Chapter 11
Collateralised debt obligation
Commercial paper
Commodities
Credit crunch
Credit default swap
Dead cat bounce
Derivatives
Equity
Fundamentals
Futures
Hedge fund
Hedging
Investment bank
Limited liability
Leveraging
Libor
Liquidity
Loans to deposit ratio
Mark-to-market
Mortgage-backed securities
Nationalisation
Negative equity
Preference shares
Profit warning
Rating
Recapitalisation
Recession
Retained earnings
Securities lending
Securitisation
Security
Short selling
Spiv
Stagflation
Sub-prime mortgages
Swap
Tier 1 capital
Toxic debts
Underwriters
Unwind
Warrants
Write-down

I have found this quite useful. Whether you check this out or something else, it's of the utmost importance that we grasp this crisis, before the greedy grasp all we have left.