The mortgage mess is difficult to explain. There are lots of axes to grind. Many seeking to place blame. Many looking to absolve themselves of blame. No wonder it's hard to really understand what actually happened. The embed video here is the work of Jonathan Jarvis. Jonathan is a graduate student, not in finance, but in Media Design. He attends the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.

It's most interesting to me that this video, the best explanation of market cause and effect that I've seen, is not the product of one of the many talking heads on CNN or CNBC or the Wall Street Journal or any well known financial media publication. It's the product of someone studying how to use new media to explain complex concepts. Jonathan, how Marshall McLuhan of you.

Jonathan gave me permission to pass this on in this post. He also asked that I mention the fine work done by John Levoff with the narration and Brandon Au who did the music. Thanks also to my friend Dave Wirshing who brought this to my attention over the weekend with a post on Twitter.

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo. 

While looking at the video a second time, I remembered Alan Greenspan's famous "irrational exuberance" comment that preceded the dot com bust. The dot com bust pales in light of the current situation. So Alan maybe had it right after all - just wrong about the timing!

Jonathan took down the original web site to which he'd posted this video. It appears that it received so much traffic that Jonathon incurred several thousand dollars of expenses. Not easily assimilated into a graduate student's budget. You can show support for this excellent material by buying a t-shirt here.

I will certainly be showing this video to many questioning clients. Maybe you will to.