Very cool, but the Bomb visualization fails to explain an important fact. The investment bankers aren't receiving cash from the homeowners, but those assets (houses) are not worthless.<p>Given time (in this case a bailout) those houses should return to normal value via demand once they've gone low enough for people to want to buy them again. At least that's the hope.
The visualization mentions credit default swaps, but then doesn't show how those, too, contributed to the cycle as all the investments were being unwound. My somewhat primitive understanding is that since the 'safe' tranche of the CDOs was 'insured' via a CDS, when the defaults actually happened, the banks had to pay back not only the amount they had borrowed, but also an additional CDS payout. This contributed to the bankruptcies too, I think.
Great visualization, really clarifies it.<p>FYI, the copy on Vimeo loaded <i>much</i> faster for me: <a href="http://www.vimeo.com/3261363" rel="nofollow">http://www.vimeo.com/3261363</a>
YES!!! Finally an explanation from a non-economist that doesn't descend into progressive-populist-bankers-are-evil propaganda.<p>And yes, a second video showing the actions of the government would be nice.