Adumbration

This 'cast condenses into 90 minutes the prior 18 months or so of observation, analysis, and theorizing about the financial crisis.  Roberts' strengths include being able to develop coherent narratives that relate well-known observations of human behavior to the incentives present under various policy conditions, sometimes with effective analogies such as in this case with that of gamblers playing in a rigged poker game.  This episode is one of only a few monologues in the series.  It closes "with some of Roberts's doubts about his narrative".  Here is a link to details contained in the paper from which the narrative is based.

The Crisis (5/17/2010) - Russ Roberts, host of EconTalk, discusses his paper, "Gambling with Other People's Money: How Perverted Incentives Created the Financial Crisis." Roberts reflects on the past eighteen months of podcasts on the crisis, and then turns to his own take, a narrative that emphasizes the role of government rescues of creditors and the incentives this created for imprudent lending. He also discusses U.S. housing policy, particularly the Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and how the government's implicit guarantee of lenders to the GSE's interacted with housing policy to increase housing prices. This in turn, Roberts argues, helped create the subprime market, created mainly by private investors. The episode closes with some of Roberts's doubts about his narrative.