The Crisis of Credit Visualized

Jonathan Jarvis has made an excellent motion graphics explanation for the economic apocalypse we’re all currently living through:

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

I worked in the financial services sector for almost 10 years whipping up marketing collateral for technology platforms that enabled trading in things like Credit Default Swaps and other highly dubious financial instruments. In all that time no one that I worked for was able to explain basic concepts like leverage and CDO’s like Mr. Jarvis has done here.

My team often sat in meetings with internal clients discussing the creation of sales brochures and banner ads in order to sell newfangled financial platforms. We were often presented with bullet lists of ‘amazing features’ (or jargon) like ‘sub-millisecond trades‘ and ‘low-latency‘ and told that’s what the customers responded to. I sometimes wonder if no one ever really understood what they were buying and selling, even down to the technology platforms that enabled the trading of these esoteric instruments.

This piece hits a lot of my pleasure centers, a well designed and snappy animation that crunches through a complex subject and presents it in human terms. If only the financial firms and investors had been able to do the same for themselves.