I know people have limited time and attention, but I’d like to put in a plug for spending a bit of your own time and attention trying to understand what’s happening right now with this crisis. It’s a huge story and a genuinely systemic crisis. And the intellectual situation feels a lot like the situation leading up to the invasion of Iraq — a lot of experts on TV and in the papers arguing one way, only it turns out they’re all retired generals or work for defense contractors (or now, are economists or bankers or real-estate speculators or whatever). It’s up to us to seek out countervailing sources of information and argument. There are a few blogs on our sidebar that provide a good starting point.