Boiling Down a Crisis Into Digestible Bits

TW: The current economic crises- the credit crisis, the domestic and worldwide demand contraction- are complex. As we have posted before, in the face of complexity many revert to ideology rather than continuing to burrow into the massive quantity of information available relative to the crises. Personally I would suggest avoiding any cable news programming where they interview a guest for less than ten minutes. These crises do not fit well into soundbites. Better yet I would say hit some of the blogs listed below.

From the Economist
"This piece on the credit crisis in Britain could just as well apply to America, or most anywhere.

'A layman might conclude that there is almost no one in Britain capable of comprehending the financial mess, and at the same time sufficiently uncontaminated by the mistakes and ruses that caused it to be entrusted with the job of fixing it...It might help if ministers looked beyond the world of banking, of which they still seem to be in a sort of post-socialist awe, for more of their recruits.'

The layman, however, may be as much to blame as anyone else. It concludes:
'The public is scared and uncertain; the politicians are panicky and confused. They are leading each other around and down a worrying spiral of ignorance". Again, it's not difficult to see this in America as well, listening to legislators from both parties, and then turning to the cable news networks. The challenge is figuring out what to do about it. It's hard to get better politicians and even harder to get better citizens.' "

suggested economic blogs:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/ (US economy and a good source for animal photos)
http://fistfulofeuros.net/ (Euro focus, will make u feel better about US relatively speaking, as the Europeans are screwed)
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/ (real estate focus but lots of good stats w/graphics)
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/ (more of an investing focus)
http://blogs.cfr.org/setser/ (Brad Setser's blog, bit wonky)
http://mpettis.com/ (on the Chinese economy and world trade, a bit wonky)
http://baselinescenario.com/ (economics focus, a bit wonky)

for those with a political bias (like me)
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/ (Nobel laureate Paul Krugman takes on the supply siders with vim and vigga)
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/ (by economist Mark Thoma)

for those with a political bias (like Sarah Palin)
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/ (mainstream conservative former Bush advisor, he and Krugman provide the best, serious sources for their respective sides of the arguments)
http://kudlowsmoneypolitics.blogspot.com/ (Larry Kudlow poster child for wrong-headed supply side economics and if folks do not stop listening to him soon we may just get GD 2.0)
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/ (libertarian economist, who believes the economy is in much better shape than folks think, and if there were no taxes the world would be just peachy)