you’ll be rich!

aww, shit

Well, no.

But you, British taxpayer, are now the proud owner of 37 billion-pounds-worth of bank. £37 billion! Frankly, you could have done better. But, now you own the banks, you can attempt to guarantee

• they start lending to businesses again, so you get paid, other business get paid and we won’t have to queue with wheelbarrow-fulls of worthless tenners just to do the weekly shop

credit crunch: wtf?

damn straight

Once again, This American Life explains how giving mortgages to people with no money turned into the end of Western capitalism.

The show explores how the commercial credit market froze up, essentially crippling every major business in the Western world; how toxic financial instruments infected the entire system. Also: why the $700billion was mostly a reaming.

sub-prime mortgags: wtf?

they know

I still have no fucking idea. But US radio programme This American Life has an incredibly colourful, in-depth explanation about just how it started. It’s pretty much identical to what happened with buy-to-let mortgages here.

They interview people at the epicentre of the shit storm, including a young barman-turned-mortgage salesman who, at the height of the cheap mortgage boom, was making, $70, 000 a week in commissions.