One of our goals is to help increase understanding of the financial crisis, so that people can understand the policy choices facing our countries today. Doug Diamond and Anil Kashyap have done two guest posts on the crisis for the Freakonomics blog: one on September 18, just after the announcement of the Paulson plan, and one just yesterday. These aren’t quite explanations for beginners – they presume some understanding of debt, equity, credit default swaps, and so on – but they summarize and explain some of the key developments relatively clearly, and also lay out their opinion of the current U.S. recapitalization plan.

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