savageinfidel

This Harvard undergrad's senior thesis on CDOs (Collateralized Debt Obligations) and their role in the credit crisis was recently mention in Deal Journal. It the doesn't say anything new, but it does an impressive job of marshaling facts about the CDO markets - the author hand-collected a data set on over 700 CDO deals, and provides a wealth of information. What's more, she did it within a semester's time. HT: Marginal Revolution

We're getting close to the point where I cover the credit crisis in class, and it's also almost time for March Madness (even if my UCONN Huskies have soiled the matress to the ext thqt they'll get an early vacation)). So this comes at an ideal time - the Market Meltdown Game. Here's the article from the American Economic Association Last August, the University of Chicago Magazine asked Allen Sanderson to create an NCAA-like tournament with four regions, brackets and seeded teams. But instead of a field comprised of basketball squads, this one - dubbed "Market Madness" - was to contain 16 competitive factors contributing to the global financial meltdown of the last two years. (Their only constraint was that The Chicago School of Economics had to be a competitor.) To get started, each "team" got a name and a brief description as to why it was included in the tourney. Chicago Alumni and friends then participated in on-line voting in Autumn 2009 t...

I didn't realize this, but every year Harvard's Kennedy School invites new members of congress for a three-day "briefing" by Harvard profs on various topics. This year, Jeff Frankel came up with a graphic explanation of the current economic crisis. Here it is: Now that's what I call an information-rich slide.