It is hard to get much of an overview on a crisis while it is happening. That is why I read and link here to multiple articles with differing view points. Here is another opinion from E. J. Dionne, Jr..

“The simple truth is that Washington is petrified about this crisis and will pass something. There are dark fears floating through the city that foreign investors, particularly the Chinese, might begin to pull their billions out of our system.

Scarier than the bad mortgages are those unregulated credit default swaps that financier George Soros has been warning about. There are $45 trillion of those esoteric instruments sloshing around the global financial system. They were invented as a hedge against debt defaults, but even the financial smart guys don’t fully understand their impact or how to price their real value.

Fear is a terrible motivator for careful legislating, but it’s a heck of a way to bring about a lot of bipartisanship.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/25/AR2008092503684.html?nav=slate

Michael