I'll update this blog with a few new posts soon!

I haven't been able to keep up with this blog, but I have a couple of posts in the works and hope to post on this blog at least twice a month.  In the meantime, feel free to follow me on Twitter @lynnmarentette

If you are interested in emerging technologies, feel free to subscribe to my main blog, Interactive Multimedia Technology.  

Economic sounds & sights: Too complex to keep up for now!

I haven't been able to keep up with this topic lately!

The economic ups and downs over the past months have been quite complex, with so many things going on. Teachers are being laid off, while their neighbors with "clunkers" are given vouchers for up to $4,000.00, or maybe more, to purchase a new car. Mental health funding in my state, N.C., has been slashed by 40 million, and services for the disabled will be significantly reduced. Many bank executives will receive bonuses, and others, in the case of Bank of America, hid bonuses given to executives of Merrill-Lynch, prior to the "merger/takeover". Every so often, another Ponzi scheme surfaces, and yet another round of people have lost a good chunk of savings for retirement.

There is a problem with leadership, in my opinion. The stimulus money is rejected by a governor, who adheres to conservative principals in everything but his relationship with his wife, setting a confusing example for his four sons, not to mention the citizens of his state who trusted that he would be a good steward.

Ballad of Bernie Madoff Video, via Flinch Studio and Blog Maverick

In keeping with the "Economic Sounds and Sights" theme of this blog, I'm sharing the following parody of a familiar ad, highlighting the Ponzi scheme created and maintained by Bernie Madoff. Enjoy!



"Parody of the Free Credit Report.com "Pirate" ad featuring Financial Supervillain Bernie Madoff. Sentenced to a lifetime of Restaurant servitude, perhaps he will pay off the money he owes a few bucks at a time. Written and produced at Flinch Studio for Mark Cuban's "Blog Maverick"


I visited Mark Cuban's blog and found that he has some interesting things to say about the Bernie Madoff scam:

Breaking Down Bernie Madoff
"Find the programmers who wrote the software and you will find out how the whole thing worked."

Breaking Down Bernie Madoff P2 & 3
"Curiosity got the best of me. So I started doing some searching on the electronic trading platform Bernie built. They called it Primex. Its an electronic auction system for securities. According to media reports, it was the “brainchild of Bernie and Peter Madoff"."

Via Flowing Data: Sculptural Data Visualization: Derivatives volume and GDP, 2007, created by Andreas Nicolas Fischer - and related information

The top layer of the map represents the derivatives volume, and the bottom layer represents the GDP.

Andreas Nicolas Fischer: "This sculpture is a statistical map, a hybrid between physical and conceptual space. The horizontal arrangement equates to the Mercator projection of a world map and the vertical axis metaphorically corresponds to the financial activity of the country."

Related Articles: Derivatives Volume

OTC Derivatives Volume Posing Problems
Gregory Bresiger, Traders Magazine 3/19/2008
"The explosion in over-the-counter derivatives trading could overwhelm the timely processing and settlement procedures of brokerages."

"Alleviating the Credit Derivatives Crisis" Report Offered by BearingPoint As NY Fed Prepares to Meet to Study Issues -bobsguide (The Guide to Software & Technology in Asset Management, Banking & Risk Management)

“In fact, the overstressed credit derivatives market infrastructure has created the potential for a financial disaster if an event triggers a significant strain, such as a major U.S. company filing for bankruptcy. Unless this technology is updated and improved, the industry will continue to operate with lead weights and put the health of the market overall at risk,” added Benedetto."

Financial Markets- Subprime mortgage crisis: are credit derivatives to blame? -laCaixa Research Department, Monthly Report, num 308- December 2007

"Warren Buffet, the world’s best-known investor, once called financial derivatives «time bombs». On the other hand, Alan Greenspan, former governor of the Federal Reserve, believes they are «indispensable tools for managing risk». Surely, however, both would be in agreement that financial derivatives constitute one of the key factors in the subprime mortgage crisis."

"But, what are financial derivatives? A derivative is a financial instrument whose value is based on the price of another asset, called an underlying asset. An example is an option to buy 1,000 General Electric shares within one year at a fixed price of 40 dollars. The option buyer has a benefit if within one year the price goes above 40 dollars since he will be able to buy an asset which perhaps is worth 60 dollars although it cost only 40. In this case, the possibility, but not the obligation, to buy is what we understand by a financial derivative and the General Electric shares constitute the underlying asset, that is, the pre-existing asset and what gives us the price of the derivative."



Credit Derivatives: An Overview (pdf)
David Mengle, Head of Research, International Swaps and Derivatives Association
Atlanta Fed's May 2007 Financial Markets Conference, "Credit Derivatives: Where's the Risk?"

"Costs. It is often argued that the flip side of wider and deeper risk transfer is that,
instead of exerting a stabilizing influence on markets, it is potentially destabilizing
because it transfers risk from participants that specialize in credit risk (that is, banks)
to participants with less experience in managing credit risk—for example, insurers
and hedge funds (“Risky business” 2005, for example). In addition, there is the danger
that anything used to disperse risk can also be used by investors seeking yield
enhancement to concentrate risk. Finally, these new institutions generally fall outside
the regulatory reach of agencies that oversee various aspects of the credit markets."

Regulation and Financial Innovation
Speech: Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, Atlanta Fed's May 2007 Financial Markets Conference
Conclusion
"Financial innovation has great benefits for our economy. The goal of regulation should be to preserve those benefits while achieving important public policy objectives, including financial stability, investor protection, and market integrity. Although financial innovation promotes those objectives in some ways, for example by allowing better sharing of risks, certain aspects of financial innovation--including the complexity of financial instruments and trading strategies, the illiquidity or potential illiquidity of certain instruments, and explicit or embedded leverage--may pose significant risks. These risks should not be taken lightly."


Credit Derivatives: Boon to Mankind or Accident Waiting to Happen?
Speech by Thomas Huertas, Director, Wholesale Firms Division, at the Rhombus Research Annual Conference, April 26, 2006 (UK)

"The difficulties lie in the details, and that is where accidents could happen."

"During 2004 and 2005 it was increasingly apparent that institutions were not obtaining the necessary consents prior to assigning their obligations to a third party. The danger arose that this would become market-practice – a situation that would have undermined the very usefulness of the credit derivatives market. Unauthorised assignments posed the risk that participants in the credit derivatives market could not be sure who their counterparties were and to what extent they could rely on the credit derivatives that they had written or bought. If a credit default event occurred, the buyer of protection would not necessarily have been able to find the entity responsible to provide protection and/or to enforce its claim on that provider. Correspondingly, regulators had concerns as to whether banks and investment firms could accurately measure counterparty risk and/or credit risk. This had knock-on effects on firms' ability to calculate large exposures and capital requirements."

OCC Reports Derivatives Volume Tops $96 Trillion
Hoosier Banker, 10/01/2005
"Derivatives held by U.S. commercial banks increased by $5.1 trillion in the second quarter of 2005, to $96.2 trillion, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency reported Sept. 30 in its quarterly Bank Derivatives Report."

"Kathryn Dick, Deputy Comptroller for Risk Evaluation, said that while the notional amount of derivatives is a reasonable reflection of business activity, it does not represent the amount at risk for commercial banks. The risk in a derivatives contract is a function of a number of variables, such as whether counterparties exchange notional principal, the volatility of the currencies or interest rates used as the basis for determining contract payments, the maturity and liquidity of contracts, and the creditworthiness of the counterparties in the transactions, she said.The OCC also reported that credit derivatives increased by $981 billion, to $4.1 trillion.

"Low worldwide interest rates and credit spreads have let to strong client demand for credit instruments, and the growth in notional volumes reflects that," said Dick. "Our large dealer banks have targeted credit derivatives as an important segment of their product mix, and a critical aspect of our supervision is to work with other agencies to ensure that the dealer community has the appropriate operational infrastructure to support this growing market".

Risky Business: Credit Derivatives (pdf )8/18/05, The Economist

"Of course, things can go wrong. It is possible that the pricing of ever more complicated instruments might sometimes be too much even for the ultra-brainy lot who do it, with expensive results. Tranched instruments have no clear market price, so they have to be valued with complex models. Working out whether a default in a portfolio is likely to be an isolated event, or is a harbinger of more to come, is especially tricky, not least because data on credit defaults are relatively sparse. Some worry about the increased activity of hedge funds which, lured by the yield on illiquid, complicated instruments, make up as much as 70% of trading volume in credit derivatives, by some counts."

Glossary of Derivatives Terminology, ISDA

Revisiting the NY Times Interactive Timeline: 10 Weeks of Financial Turmoil

The New York Times developed an interactive timeline of the events surrounding the economic crisis from September 7 through November 17 2008. It is worth taking a look at the timeline, even if you've seen it previously.

Ten Weeks of Financial Turmoil

More Jokes and Quotes, via Jon ( posted on the CodeProject's soapbox & rants message board)

Jon, a member of the CodeProject, posted the following quotes from movers and shakers from the 2007 financial world. In most cases, the opposite turned out to be true:

Note: I did not check the accuracy of these quotes.


"More Jokes from Bigtime Capitalists"

AIG Comedy Hour
"We are confident in our marks and the reasonableness of our valuation methods. We have a high degree of certainty in what we have booked to date." -- CEO of AIG, Martin Sullivan, Dec. 5, 2007

Bear Sterns Two-Face Show
Matthew Tannin, Bear Stearns portfolio mgr.(later arrested by the FBI): "If we believe the report is ANYWHERE CLOSE to accurate, I think we should close the funds now.... If [the report] is correct, then the entire subprime market is toast." -- Internal memo to another portfolio manager, April 22, 2007.

"So from a structural point of view, from an asset point of view, from a surveillance point of view, we're very comfortable with exactly where we are." -- Tannin to investors on April 25, 2007 (three days later)

"Our liquidity and balance sheet are strong.... We don't see any pressure on our liquidity, let alone a liquidity crisis." -- CEO Alan Schwartz to CNBC on March 12, 2008 - One day before he asked the Feds for emergency funding.

Countrywide ain't on your side
An analyst report suggesting that Countrywide faced liquidity problems "was totally irresponsible and baseless." On the contrary, "every one of these [crises] you come out of stronger, better, and with less competition." -- CEO Angelo Mozilo to CNBC on Aug. 23, 2007 - sold to BoA 11 months later.

Fannie is another name for a--
"There are no current plans to go back to the market for capital because we have all of those other levers that are turned on, producing capital, putting us into an increasingly - into a comfortable position based on where we are in the market right now." -- CEO Daniel H. Mudd, Feb. 27, 2008

Lehman Bros need glasses
"We are on the right track to put these last two quarters behind us." -- CEO Richard Fuld on Sept. 10, 2008 (6 days until it implodes and goes belly up.) These days, he's answering questions for federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Newark.

Merrill Lynch " ...."
"I think proactive, aggressive risk management has put us in an exceptionally good position.... We have seen significant reductions in our exposure to lower-rated segments of the market." -- CFO Jeffrey N. Edwards, July 17, 2007.

Wamu puts the whammy on you
As the housing market has softened as expected, what I have really seen is a continued very good performance out of most parts of the portfolio." -- CEO Kerry K. Killinger on Jan. 17, 2007 (He's presently under investigation for fraud.).

Is everybody laughing?

(Thanks, Jon, for your insight!)

Timeline of Songs about the Economic Crisis (some humorous), from Williambanzai7

I recently discovered Williambanzai7 when I came across his comment to an article on the Seeking Alpha financial information website, "Madoff Hedge Fund: Wall Street's Biggest Ponzi Scheme Yet? " Sean Maher, Seeking Alpha 12/14/08

Williambanzai7's comment consisted of the lyrics to a song about the Bernie Madoff scandal, set to the tune of Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer. It gave me a chuckle, even though it is well past the holiday season. (Williambanzai7 often posts his lyrics as comments in response to on-line articles and blog-posts related to the current economic crisis.)

I checked out his blog, and discovered that most of his posts are lyrics dedicated to the "Great American Subprime Disaster". A few posts relate to the politics of our times. The songs are in lyrical form only. As far as I know, there is no audio.

Here is a solution- KARAOKE. Gather some friends and belt out the tunes while singing Williambanzai7's lyrics! (Your economic woes will disappear, at least for a while.)

SOME OF MY FAVORITES

September 2008
SUBPRIME BAILOUT PROTEST SONG (One, Two, Three What Are We Fighting For? -Joe McDonald)

I AM THE WAMU ("I am the Walrus" -the Beatles)
"I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together. See how they run like hedge fund bums from a gun, see how they fly. I'm crying."

STUCK IN A MORTGAGE WITH YOU (Stuck in the Middle- Stealer's Wheel)

October 2008
MONEY FOR NOTHING -Residential Mortgage Backed Securities (Money for Nothing - Dire Straits)

I like the following two songs, because you can sing AND dance to them:
LET'S DO THE SUBPRIME WARP AGAIN! (Let's Do the Time Warp - Rocky Horror Picture Show)
BAILOUT THRILLER RETURNS (Thriller- Michael Jackson)

November 2008
THE AIG BALANCE SHEETS (The Adams Family)
BABY CAN YOU BAIL OUR CARS (Baby You Can Drive My Car - the Beatles)
WHERE HAVE ALL THE BAILOUT BUCKS GONE? (Where Have All the Flowers Gone- Pete Seeger)

December 2008
MADOFF, THE WALL STREET FAKER (Rudolph, the Red-nosed Reindeer)
HEDGE FUNDS ROASTING ON AN OPEN FIRE (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)
THE TWELVE WALL STREET DAYS OF CHRISTMAS (The Twelve Days of Christmas)

January 2009
YOU'RE JOHN THAIN (You're so Vain - Carley Simon)
CITIGROUP BITES THE DUST (Another One Bites the Dust- Queen)


"Wall Street: The Musical", anyone?
(Think Mama Mia and Moulin Rouge.)


RELATED
Seeking Alpha
THE WILLIAMBANZAI7 BLOG: The Great American Subprime Disaster

The Power of Pictures: The Financial Crash and Survival on the Hudson

Pictures, graphs, and charts, if done well, provide a powerful way of representing information that will be part of our historical time-line in the future.

We've all read about the growing mortgage foreclosure problem. Most people probably pass at least one foreclosed property when they are out and about. The following picture puts it the problem in perspective:

Detroit Metropolitan Area Foreclosures 2006, 2007 & 2008 -Detroit Free Press

It might make a powerful impression if this graphic was integrated into an interactive map of the states, along with related info-graphics & data visualizations. In my opinion, the impact would last in my memory more so than the volume of text I'd have to read if I did not have access to the visualization.

Another example of powerful imagery is the slideshow of photographs related to the events surrounding the financial crash, posted on the Wall Street Journal website:

THE YEAR IN PHOTOS: FINANCIAL CRASH (I was not able to embed the slideshow.)

Photo Journalism By and For the People

Now that so many people carry around cell phones with cameras, recording powerful images as history is in the making is becoming common. A recent example, pointed out by Matthew Reichbach, of the New Mexico Independent, is the pictures that were taken after a US Airways plane safely "landed" in the Hudson River on 1/15/09.

The flight was on the way to Charlotte, NC, from New York City. Many of the passengers were employees of Bank of America who were flying home after talks regarding the merger with Merrill Lynch, according to an article in the Charlotte Observer. I shudder to imagine how the story would unfold if there were no survivors. The family, friends, and colleagues of the passengers would be devastated. The loss of so many key bankers involved in the merger of two corporate cultures would have dire consequences as well.

The following picture crashed Twitpic not long after it was uploaded by jkrums:

"There's a plane in the Hudson. I'm on the ferry to pick up the people. Crazy."

Photo of Hudson River plan crash downs TwitPic (Daniel Terdiman, cNET News, 1/15/09)

Social Media, citizen journalism trumps traditional media--on the plane crashes beat (Matthew Reichbach, the New Mexico Independent, 1/16/09)

As the news was breaking, CNN encouraged eye-witnesses to upload pictures and video to their iReport website, resulting in some moving pictures of what now is called a miracle:

iReport photos by EricinParis, a passenger on Flight 1549:


Miracle on the Hudson (Ann Doss Helms and Steve Lyttle, Charlotte Observer 1/16/09)

Finally, Charlotte Catches a Break (Corey Dade and Betsy McKay, Wall Street Journal 1/17/09)

Lyrics to Demand, Supply Rap and Link to Chapter 1 of Professor Mankiw's Econ Textbook

One of the popular posts on the Economic Sounds and Sights blog contains a link to the "Demand, Supply" rap, created by Rhythm, Rhyme, Results, an educational music company located in Cambridge, M.A.

Joyce Santos was kind enough to post the lyrics to the rap, which I've posted below. The rap is was inspired by Harvard professor Greg Mankiw's ten principles of economics. These principles can be downloaded from the following link:

Chapter 1: Ten Principles of Economics (pdf)
Principles of Economics, Fourth Edition N.Greg Mankiw

Lyrics to Demand, Supply Rap, by Rhythm, Rhyme, Results
Via Joyce Santos

Verse I
Tradin’ this for that, call it tit for tat
We all face tradeoffs and that’s a fact because
Everything is in finite supply
That’s the reason why we all sell and buy

Next up is rule deuce, the next best use
Of money or time defines its true value
It’s more convoluted than just the simple cost
What else could you do? What opportunities are lost?

Decisions at the margin, yeah that’s the key
To understanding principle #3
Take your present situation and assume that it’s the best
If a change is worth more than it costs, then that’s your test

Lesson #4: it’s like the carrot and the stick
We break it down so you can see what makes the world tick
So why do we do the things that we do?
It’s a system of incentives that we all respond to

Chorus
Demand, supply
Listen up, learn this, and you’ll know why
We work, we buy
The price is right when the competition’s alive
(x2)

Verse II
Everyone in society can benefit from trade
#5 is a reminder that we shouldn’t let hope fade
Just use what you’ve got to produce your best
The money that you make will buy the rest

Lesson 6 is a trick, the invisible hand
Buyers and sellers clear markets without the man
The market system almost always prevails
But recognize, too, that markets can fail

Because of monopolies and the troubles they create
Uncle Sam comes along and he’s gotta regulate
That’s lesson #7: when government’s there
They oversee to guarantee that competition is fair

#8 says the future of a national State
Relies on services and products people create
If we sell and excel and we keep doing well
Then the money keeps going ’round just like a carousel

Chorus

Verse III
#9: keep an eye on that money supply
Printing too much paper sends prices sky high
A dollar means nothing, it’s just a nice name
If what it represents doesn’t stay the same

Number 10: there’s a tradeoff in the short run
Between unemployment and inflation
I really can’t explain the whole situation
You want the full story? Step up your education!

John Quiggin's Series on Refuted Economic Doctrines

Ryan Lanham shared a link regarding John Quiggin's series on refuted theories of modern economics and finance. I am sharing this link not to support one doctrine over another, but simply to add the information to my on-going collection about economy and finance.

I know that many people are hoping that if they just cross their fingers and hold their breath, the economy as we previously understood it during the best years of the first decade of this century will return. Things simply will not work the same way as before, in my opinion, partly because of the pervasiveness of this many-layered phenomenon.

It is important for everyone to look at the various plates of economic theory spinning around!

Death And Taxes Interactive Graphic, from Wall Stats

Here's the embedded version of Wall Stats' Death And Taxes 2009

SmartMoney's Interactive TreeMap: Map of the Market, created by Martin Wattenberg

Interactive TreeMap: Map of the Market
(Created by Martin Wattenberg)


This interactive map was developed in 1998, but still is very useful today. It has been following the market over the past ten years or so on the SmartMoney website.

For more information about how to understand and use the map, read "Instructions: Map of the Market", and "Secrets to Using the Map of the Market"

Francine McKenna's Blog: Re: The Auditors "Madoff and Blagojevich: Stealing - Easier When No One is Watching"

Francine McKenna's blog, re: The Auditors, is a great place to get good information regarding topics related to finance, accounting, and the economy. One of her recent posts sheds some light on the latest scandals in our society:

Madoff and Blagojevich: Stealing - Easier When No One Is Watching

I was delighted to discover that McKenna had posted a video of musicians performing a song related to her topic, also in keeping with the theme of the Economic Sounds and Sights blog.

Jane's Addiction's Been Caught Stealing, via Terranaomi


Quotes from McKenna's blog post:
"Ethical relativism is alive and well. The extreme sense of entitlement and unadulterated self-interest inherent in some of the worst offenders is an example of pure evil...I see bad people...."The smart money KNEW Bernie had to be cheating, because the returns he was generating were impossibly good. Many Wall Streeters suspected the wrong rigged game, though: They thought it was insider trading, not a Ponzi scheme.
And here's the best part: That's why they invested with him." "


Related:

Naked Capitalism: SEC Skipped Normal Inspection of Madoff Hedge Fund

Massive Declines All Around the World; Wall Street Journal Video - Analysis of World

Is it impossible for experts to model the current state of the world economy?

For a few insights about the current global economic situation, take a look at the video analysis with Andy Jordan and Tom Lauricella from the Wall Street Journal below.

Are there glimmers of hope in this massive decline of global markets? How can we really know?

Market Mush


Related
WSJ Interactive Graphic of 10/24/08 Market Dynamics:
Tough Session: Stock declines started in Asia and quickly spread as markets opened for trading around the world

WSJ Article -10/25/08:
Fresh Tumult as Signs of Recession go Global
(Kelly Evans, Joellen Perry,Yumiko Ono and John Lyons)
"In rich countries and poor countries alike, markets are plunging, companies are scrambling for credit and cutting their growth plans and consumers are keeping cash in their pockets. The U.S. and some governments in Europe and Asia are spending heavily to stanch the problems in markets and Main Streets globally, but the attempts have not halted the damage."

Economic Odds and Ends: Stock Market Panorama; Banking and Children;

Here are a few odds and ends regarding the economy:

Ambient information systems - a real-time data panorama of the stock market:


Real-time data panoramas: "Once the stock market opens, our 3D simulation comes to life & people start 'breathing' business information" via Bashiba.com "BASHIBA Panorama exploits the visual perceptual capabilities of the human brain. It harnesses untapped brain power."

Children and the current economic crisis:


Banking and Saving with Your Child (Video via Knowledge Essentials)

(from Knowledge Essentials on BlipTV) "Tough economic times are everywhere. How do you explain what the economy is to your child and then parlay that into help with your household budget? Check this out to see."

Economic Sounds and Sights as Interactive Timeline in Dipity

To see this timeline in a larger frame, click here.


Information about Dipity from the Dipity Blog:
October 03rd, 2008 | By: BK | Category: Uncategorized

"We unlocked “Dipity 2.0″ today with one simple goal: letting you follow updates from the people and topics you care about, and have fun doing it.

The new Dipity organizes updates from sites like YouTube, WordPress, Twitter, and 7500 news sites into “channels” on our interactive timeline.

Dipity is the best place to go to catch up on your online world.

You can create your personal channel to broadcast updates to your friends, and can start a channel about anything from Darfur to Dave Mathews in just a few seconds. Start a channel is super-simple fast new options:

* Web Search: Enter a keyword and we’ll scour the web for the most popular content
* Feeds: Drop in an RSS feed and we’ll take it from there.
* Fresh: Start fresh and update with links, video, images and more."

Interactive economic timelines in Dippity

I'm still searching for examples of interactive timelines related to economics, finance, economic history, and the current economic crisis. I visited the Dipity website, and found a few interesting timelines:

An Interactive Timeline of the Current Economic Crisis, from Dipity
The Financial Crisis: A shocking series of events that forever changed the financial markets, as reported by Fortune magazine. (Created on Dippity by cwood)


Note: Contents in the Dipity format can be viewed as an interactive timeline, a flipbook, a list, or a map.

FelixLowe

Here is a static timeline:

Timeline of Economic Turmoil Virgin Media, September 30, 2008

Link from Visualizing Economics: Flashback Economy/Prices

I came across a link on the Visualizing Economics blog to the Flashback website , where you can find information about the economy as it was from the 1960's to the present.

What we really need now is "flash-forward" website!

Business Week: "They Warned Us About the Mortgage Crisis"

A recent article in Business Week explains how some state officials were concerned about lending practices, and why their concerns went unheeded several years ago:

"They Warned Us About the Mortgage Crisis"
10/09/2008 by Robert Berner and Brian Grow


FYI: Business Week's Learning Center provides a good overview of stock market and investing basics, including definition of terms.

NY Times Series "The Reckoning: The Risk in Hindsight"

As a public school employee, my investment knowledge, until the past few weeks, has been limited to my understanding of my low-risk 401K and 403-b funds.

Derivatives? Hedge funds? Credit Derivatives? Short selling? Futures Contracts? Why should I worry about all of that! Like many other people, I was happy in my ignorance.

Here are a few links that I found useful in my fast-track education in finance and economics:

The New York Times Online is full of articles and video clips exploring the causes of the financial crisis:

Video: Examining the Financial Crisis
Video Timeline: Five Weeks of Financial TurmoilVideo: How Fannie Mae's Problems Lead to the Country's Financial Crisis
The Credit Crisis-The Essentials
AIG: Behind Insurer’s Crisis, Blind Eye to a Web of Risk
Taking a Hard New Look at Greenspan Legacy


NY Times Multimedia Graphic: Growth of a Complex Market

Interactive Graphic: Credit Crisis Indicators

More to come!

Reference:
Investopedia