Trustworthy Financial Crisis Reporting From ProPublica

Hey, the folks at ProPublica do true public service media, funded philanthropically and according to a strict code of ethics. The code is a really big deal; to me, it's a commitment to traditional journalism values like fact checking and the separation of reporting and advertising. (Yes, I'm no journalist, but this I get.)

Here's the latest, an interactive graphic:

... adding new depth to recent reporting done recently on how complicated financial instruments called "collateralized debt obligations" (CDOs) helped worsen the financial crisis of 2008. ProPublica's latest reporting, with NPR's Planet Money, makes clear that the market for CDOs was riven with self-dealing and fake demand. This new interactive provides the details, names names, details how the daisy chain worked. And it does so using a cool software tool that's further explained on ProPublica's new Nerd Blog.

("nerd blog?" that sounds good to me, but I digress.)

For people who are a bit confused about CDOs, (like me) or who just prefer comics to charts, ProPublica has one of those as well.