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So, the 2008 crash has you worried? Oh, you're NOT worried?

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Here are some incredible founts of wisdom. Sure, some of it may seem like tinfoil now, but then some of it sure felt like tinfoil before the market started to crash too...

• Financial concepts
  • Compounding (exponential functions)
  • Why is 2% interest compounded annually, such a little thing really, such a BIG deal?
    • The full set of videos
• Fractional Reserve Banking
  • It's the banking system the US uses, invented by blacksmiths apparently. Blacksmiths used to hold gold for people and give them notes. Some shrewd ones figured out they could effectively print their own money by handing out more notes than they had gold as long as everyone didn't come get their gold at the same time (today, that would be called a run on the bank). Just like that, Fractional Reserve Banking was born.
  • Chris Martenson's Crash Course
    • Good background on how the economy works, what fiat currency is, etc.
      • Note: also covers whether practices are sustainable and why we have some of the issues we have today
    • The first 3-4 videos are a bit slow (but later videos will assume you got their point), but Chapters 6 and up are fascinating. Why didn't I (we?) learn this in school?
  • The crisis of credit
    • High level view of how we got into this mess in the first place
• Capital Preservation
• Think the gold you keep at home is yours? Think again.
  • The US Dollar was sinking, but as of March 2009, it's at the same level as when the crisis started, even with Quantative Easing...
• Economy
• Denninger
  • Makes economic predictions, then measures his success throughout the year. We HATE it when he's right lately, because it's usually not good news. And, unfortunately, he frequently is right. Sometimes he gets into a rant, but overall his site is extremely informative. Updated daily
• Calculated Risk
  • Pretty keen observations from time to time. Updated regularly
  • Highly intruiging articles
  • The Quiet Coup
    • IMF's ex-chief economist discusses US oligarchy and obstactles to reform. Includes 2 possible outcomes for US.
  • Building the bomb that blew up Wall Street
    • A software developer's role in CMO's, a device which lead to our current downfall
• Economic indicators
  • The US government changes the measurements at will, but doesn't really tell us they did it!
    • Some of the practices used to game, errr, improve? the system
      • Hedonics, Substitution, and Weighting - (great examples are provided in Chapter 16 of the Crash Course)
        • These are relatively new processes which makes inflation look lower than it would have in, say, 1980 when we used a far less disturbing approach. What we do now is crazy. See ShadowStats below.
  • Measures and counter-measures
  • Forecasting Recessions
  • Unemployment measurements
    • Inflation, Money Supply, GDP, Unemployment and the Dollar
      • ShadowStats - What today's numbers would look like if we used the 1980s way of counting these (and charts). New counting is a key reason our "low" unemployment in 2008 does not correlate to the economic "condition" (many layoffs and failing companies, etc.)
      • Here's a counterpoint to ShadowStats from... the government agency ShadowStats is challenging.
        • Seems to me they're trying to justify a faulty system. In my lay-opinion, you can't measure inflation based on substitution. I can't justify buying a lot of things right now, but if I had more disposable income or they were cheaper, I'd be buying them.
    • BLS Birth/Death (of businesses) model is used to calculate the Current Employment Statistics (CES)
      • Each month the Labor Department plugs into its employment number something called the Birth/Death Adjustment. Explained simply, this adjustment tries to take into account the number of jobs quietly created by companies being born, or jobs lost because companies go out of business.
      • There is a TON of controversy that a good chunk of this number is effectively "made up", perhaps to help make the numbers look good, then revised 1-2 months later to be more accurate. Late 2008/early 2009 has seen huge revisions downwards (100% and more), further supporting the "Government is lying to make it look better than it is" mentality. Google away, lots of people are frustrated by this model.
• Markets (not just stocks)
• EconomicEdge
  • Want to get a taste for some folks who really understand the market, pennants, triangles, and those other greek-to-me terms? Check out Nathan Martin's site
• Housing Market
• Click here
• Stocks
• Elliot Wave Theory
• Trading Strategies
  • Doug Short's Financial Lifecycle Planning (no, he's not a market-shorting zealot, it's just his name)
• The Great Depression
• Timeline from the Great Depression