Round-up: financial crisis explained by stick figures (and more!)

• I recently came across The Subprime Primer-- a 45-page stick figure cartoon that is fun, painless, and actually suprisingly helpful in understanding how we got into this crisis. It was done last year, so it doesn't talk about what makes the situation so acute right now, but it definitely lays the groundwork. Enjoy (though beware of adult language!)
• And on the subject of the financial crisis, this is so simultaneously infuriating and amusing that I have to share it. An investigation of the credit rating agencies, which routinely gave lowest-risk AAA ratings to risky mortgage-backed securities, found an e-mail by one of the analysts bemoaning their reckless practices by saying: “It could be structured by cows and we would rate it.” (On the less-amusing side, “Let’s hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of cards falters.”)
• My Two Dollars has an interesting discussion at Friends Asking Friends For Donations - How Do You Handle It?
• The Psychological and Emotional Attachment to What We Have and What We Want is a thoughtful recent post from The Simple Dollar.