LIBERADIO(!)

After weeks of blaring headlines atop the Financial Times, the collapse of Lehman Bros., the transformation of standalone investment banks Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs into deposit-takers (as a mechanism for accessing bailout money), a $25 billion bailout of the carmakers, a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, a secondary $800 billion bailout focused on secondary credit markets, a record low in consumer confidence, unemployment as high as its been in 15 years, a separate bailout for Citigroup, a decline in GDP in the 3rd quarter that was already negative and then revised downward, and probably a few other staggering indicators (including much of the global turmoil) I’m missing, reading Bob Krumm as the tire falls off the swing is almost amusing.

Finally, as an exclamation point, last week, the Nashville Public Library, a participant in the ITVS Community Cinema project, screened I.O.U.S.A, a documentary about America’s problem with debt. The movie provides a stark reminder that we’re facing a fiscal crisis in addition to our current financial crisis. It prominently features David Walker, until recently the Comptroller General of the United States, who engaged in a Fiscal Wakeup Tour with The Concord Coalition. (See Liberadio(!) coverage from their Nashville stop, which was hosted by Congressman Jim Cooper.) The documentary provides an excellent visual reiteration of the finer points of the presentations given during that tour, and the issue, unsurprisingly, has not gone away. Incidentally, Mr. Walker left his job as a bureaucrat to focus full-time on America’s fiscal crisis. He’s now CEO at the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, which shares his personal mission. His work will bear watching, for once the financial crisis is behind us, we have a fiscal crisis to tackle.

I highly recommend the movie, and there’s a substantial trailer available:

For those living in the reality-based community, Marketplace has complete coverage of the financial crisis, which, by any measure of the coverage from the financial news industry and economists, does, in fact, exist.