This Man Knows his Stuff

This morning I listened to the single most interesting discussion of the current financial meltdown I have yet heard.

Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics at the NYU Stern School of Business was interviewed for an hour on Bloomberg Financial Radio. I learned more in one hour listening to him than I had in days of watching the basic news channels do their typical ineffectual job of delivering news information.

You can listen to the interview here. Professor Roubini also has a very popular financial blog where he explains the situation on a day to day basis.

I am distressed, not at the lack of knowledge that Americans have on this subject, but the apparent unwillingness to learn a thing or two. Obviously, not everyone has a detailed knowledge of economics, I know that I sure as hell can barely keep up with what I read about all of this; but am I the only one who finds it incredibly disturbing that even after two weeks of being involved in this crisis, the nightly and morning news still devotes ten minute segments to explaining what the FDIC is? Am I the only one offended that after two weeks of meltdown, the news still has to waste time explaining to viewers what a sub-prime mortgage is, or whether or not they will be able to pull money out of an ATM next week? Is this really how stupid we as a country have become? Even during a potential economic collapse, the average person is too lazy to pull up Google to read for five minutes about what a sub-prime loan is, what a securitized mortgage is, and what the FDIC does? Every night on the news they talk about the 'hundreds of calls and emails' people are sending in asking the most ridiculously basic and simple questions; I find it insulting.

Obviously we won't become wizards of economics by reading a few stories about it, but it seems to me the news should at least be able to discuss this stuff on a college-freshman level. Instead when I turn on the news I feel like Brian Williams is about to pull out the sock puppets to explain that when I put $1 into a piggy bank, one year later I will magically pull out $1.03!