This week is the anniversary of the economic collapse last year. In remembrance of this, This American Life, a wonderful radio show/podcast, is revisiting the story that they ran last year explaining the housing crisis and how it all began. It sounds boring, but it is one of the best explanations of this that I have ever heard. You can listen to it here. You can also listen to the original podcast, The Giant Pool of Money.
390: Return To The Giant Pool of Money
In which we mark the anniversary of the economic collapse and the anniversary of Planet Money: recapping some of the original episode, The Giant Pool of Money, and finding out what’s happened to all those guys in the year since.
You can check out all of our shows on the economy here.
Prologue.Host Ira Glass talks with NPR correspondent Adam Davidson about a black tie event he attended in the spring of 2008. The event was an awards dinner for finance professionals who created the mortgage-based financial instruments that nearly brought down the global economic system. Adam checks back with one of the men he met at that dinner and learns how his views have changed, pretty radically, over the last 18 months. (5 minutes)
Act One. Spring 2008.
We replay sections from the original Giant Pool of Money, in which This American Life producer Alex Blumberg teams up with NPR’s Adam Davidson to tell the story of how the U.S. got itself into a housing crisis. They talk to people who were actually working in the housing, banking, finance and mortgage industries, about what they thought during the boom times, and why the bust happened. We hear from a mortgage company sales manager who was making over a million dollars a year and spending his time clubbing with celebrities. We meet a man who got into the mortgage industry after getting hired away from his previous job as a bartender. And we follow a Marine who was tricked into an unaffordable mortgage as he tries to save his house from foreclosure. (30 minutes)
Act Two. Fall 2009.
We catch back up with the people we met in 2008, to see how they’ve fared over the last 18 months. We talk to Clarence Nathan, who in 2008 received a half million dollar loan that he said he wouldn’t have given himself; Jim Finkel, a Wall Street finance guy, who put together and managed complicated mortgage-based financial securities; Richard Campbell, the Marine who was facing foreclosure; and Glen Pizzolorusso, the mortgage company sales manager who led the life of a b-list celebrity. (19 minutes)
Any optimists touting a housing recovery might want to pause and think about this: Amherst Securities Group analysts believe the market faces another major hurdle because about 7 million properties that are likely to be seized by lenders have yet to hit the market.
