Help understanding the financial crisis

Has the complicated financial news lately got you scratching your head? Need some help telling TARP from ARRA from FDIC?

Some industrious librarians offer these well-organized collections of reliable, authoritative links to helpful information on the subject. Louise Feldmann, at Colorado State University, has made this comprehensive guide available. Jason Phillips, a reference librarian at Mississippi State is working on another extensive guide, which even includes links audio and video resources. (Note that not all sub-topics have content yet.) Speaking of which, here is National Public Radio's Economy page, which provides access to many of their news stories and analysis programs. And another Colorado library, the Jefferson County Public Library in Lakewood, has put together this page on the crisis.

In addition to these library projects, the Federal Reserve branch in St. Louis, which provides oodles of good economic data in the best of times, too, has developed this Financial Crisis Timeline. The site also includes links to analytical papers and reports, data, and a handy FAQ.

The financial news might be gloomy, but it's always better to know more about a problem than just to ignore it and hope it goes away. We hope these links will help!