Tensegrities

Check this out! (hat tip to Anita)

In what feels like a time long ago and far away, we were actively working to end nuclear weapons. Remember the Nuclear Weapons Freeze campaign? At one point during that advocacy, there was a project touring around the country using a cleverly designed — and very accessible to ordinary folks — slide show to explain the varieties of nuclear weapons, and the implications of the costs of such weapons on our overall budget. Up until that point I’d had absolutely no understanding of which weapons were what, let alone how they were a part of the federal budget.

I really wish someone would make such a slide show — in these days, no doubt, a YouTube video! — that would explain in simple language what is going on economically in this country. Here’s a piece that attempts to explain something called “credit default swaps.” I’ve never heard of such things, but consider this:

The value of the entire U.S. Treasuries market: $4.5 trillion.

The value of the entire mortgage market: $7 trillion.

The size of the U.S. stock market: $22 trillion.

OK, you ready?

The size of the credit default swap market last year: $45 trillion.

These numbers are beyond my imagining. And if you thought the Bear Stearns mess was something, wait for what’s coming next. People of faith need to understand these things, in part so that we can advocate more effectively on behalf of the common good. So does anyone out there know of an effective “slide show” that explains this stuff?

These are beautiful! (hat tip to Andrew Sullivan)