Credit Crisis for Dummies: Four Visual Guides

If you’re like me, you’re a visual learner who (when given a choice) would take simple, illustrative cartoons over convoluted financial-speak any day. The more complicated the subject, the more I appreciate a good line drawing or visual metaphor to help explain it.

A handful of designers and other creative types have risen to the challenge of visually explaining a very complicated issue: the current credit crisis. And I can’t thank them enough. If you don’t fully understand why your house is worth perhaps half of what you paid for it, why the banks are failing, why the government is bleeding “bailout” money like mad, you’re not alone. The big picture is a little confusing to say the least. But these videos are here to help, and they do a pretty darn good job. 

I recommend watching all of these to view the issue from four slightly different angles (or at least four different animation styles). At the very least, they’ll inspire you to dig out your box of Pictionary and play a few rounds. 

Prefer one over the rest? Let us know in the comments section!

1. A short and sweet brief cartoon synopsis by XPLANATiON that starts with the dot com burst in 2000 and subsequent housing boom, and ends with the first government bailout in 2008.

2. Paddy Hirsch of Marketplace.org uses an old-fashioned white board and marker to illustrate his metaphor: credit crisis as Antarctic expedition. Low-tech but effective.

The credit crisis as Antarctic expedition from Marketplace on Vimeo.

3. Jonathan Jarvis, a graphic designer in southern California, has created the most in-depth and visually elaborate graphic of the ones listed here. Fun to watch, though it might require one or two replays to fully grasp all the details.

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo. 

4. This one focuses on the effect of bad housing loans on American businesses. It aired September of 2008, right before the government released its first bailout package.