Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission
183 episodes listed below
The crisis record, read into evidence.
Financial Crisis Inquiry Report turns the crisis record into a steady, document-driven audio archive. Episodes track mortgage losses, collateral fights, money-market stress, and dissenting arguments with little ornament and heavy reliance on chronology.
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Financial Crisis Inquiry Report is a long-form audio rendering of the crisis record, organized around the events, institutions, and financial structures that turned mortgage stress into systemic panic. It is not conversational. The show proceeds like a public document being read into evidence, with each section adding another dated decision, collateral demand, write-down, rating concern, or liquidity fracture. That dryness is part of the function. Episodes return again and again to the gap between apparent control and actual exposure. AIG executives confront Goldman collateral calls tied to credit default swaps, while the scale of subprime and Alt-A exposure sits beside arguments over marks and market signals. Citigroup announces far larger subprime exposure than investors had recently been told. Merrill Lynch reports losses on CDOs and subprime mortgages that quickly exceed earlier warnings. The series also follows the less visible channels of contagion. Money market funds, enhanced cash funds, structured investment vehicles, asset-backed commercial paper, repo markets, and interbank lending rates are treated as central evidence rather than technical background. Short episodes can feel repetitive because the source material is formal and procedural. The repetition also makes the pattern plain. Confidence depends on marks, liquidity, assumptions about housing prices, and the belief that certain markets will keep functioning. When those beliefs weaken, the report shows how quickly withdrawals, collateral demands, and government actions begin to reinforce one another. BNP Paribas suspending redemptions becomes a marker for the liquidity crisis. SIVs move from an assumed oasis of calm to a sector under pressure. Money funds that seemed stable reveal hidden dependence on structured products and fast-moving investors. The dissenting material adds another layer, challenging explanations that center on deregulation and emphasizing housing policy, mortgage quality, and the size of the bubble. The show suits patient listeners who want source-driven financial history more than personality-led commentary. It asks for attention, but it rewards attention with a clearer view of institutional fragility. Its drama is not theatrical; it is administrative, numerical, and cumulative. By the time the losses, ratings actions, liquidity actions, and statements have stacked up, the crisis feels less like a single crash than a sequence of linked recognitions arriving too late.
Made for: Best for listeners interested in financial history, banking regulation, mortgage markets, and institutional risk. It suits patient students of the crisis who prefer documented sequence over commentary-driven debate.
What sets it apart: Its strength is the unadorned weight of the record: figures, dates, firm names, collateral disputes, and dissenting analysis accumulate without panel chatter or sensational framing.
Explore the in-depth findings of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission as it unravels the complex web of events that led to the global financial crisis of 2007-2009. This comprehensive report not only includes two thought-provoking Dissenting Statements but also weaves a chronological narrative based on extensive research, including millions of documents and interviews with key leaders, CxOs, financial experts, and academics. Additionally, hear the powerful stories of everyday individuals—homeowners and business owners—whose lives were dramatically affected by the collapse. Join us as we delve into a pivotal moment in economic history, narrated by Mario Pineda.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
A detailed audio record of how mortgage risk, institutional incentives, and failed oversight converged during the financial crisis.
Financial Crisis Inquiry Report presents the commission's findings as a serialized public-domain reading, preserving the institutional detail behind the 2007-2009 collapse.
Every business day, Goldman sent AIG a demand letter; your inner forensic accountant just sat up.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A stern, evidence-led challenge to easy crisis narratives.
This opening of the dissenting statement treats the 2008 crisis like a case file rather than a headline. It argues that Congress and the President moved on Dodd-Frank before the FCIC had finished laying out the causes, and it uses that timing to question whether the public…
A document-first account of how collateral calls pulled AIG into a prolonged dispute with Goldman.
Goldman's dispute with AIG is presented as a drawn-out pressure campaign, not a single flashpoint. The July 26, 2007 email that cut into Alan Frost's vacation, the 14 months of formal demand letters, and AIG's surprise at how the collateral calls worked together give the account…
Citigroup's self-assurance is documented until it starts to look misplaced.
Citigroup's subprime problem reads like a chronology of delayed recognition, widening exposure, and boardroom confidence that sits awkwardly beside the losses.
A measured account of how mortgage stress spread from the margins into the core.
The section keeps its focus on delinquencies, loan types, and where the damage first showed up. Its strength is in the way it maps the housing bust from the sand states into subprime ARMs, then prime ARMs, and finally prime fixed-rate mortgages.
Revenue pressure turns ratings into a case study in incentives.
Moody's It Was All About Revenue follows the pressure inside Moody's Investor Service as structured products boomed, and it keeps circling back to the same force: revenue, market share, and the incentives tied to both.
Small things, real markets, strange incentives.
Markets, money, and Germany in motion.
A dissent asks why Congress authorized the FCIC at all.
Goldman Sachs began pressing AIG for collateral on July 26, 2007, and then sent formal demand letters every business day for 14 months as the dispute over super-senior CDO marks escalated.
Chapter 14 of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Report tracks Citigroup's subprime exposure from a disclosed $55 billion total to an $8 billion to $11 billion loss and Chuck Price's resignation.
This episode details Merrill Lynch's shocking $7.9 billion write-down in 2007, driven by losses on CDOs and subprime mortgages, leading to CEO Stanley O'Neal's resignation amid the unfolding financial crisis.
This episode examines the billions in subprime mortgage losses reported by major financial institutions like Citigroup and Merrill Lynch in late 2007 to early 2008, as detailed in the Financial Crisis Inquiry Report.
This episode discusses Chapter 13 of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, focusing on money market funds and other investors during the financial crisis, including SEC regulations and the concept of 'breaking the buck'.
This episode examines how Structured Investment Vehicles (SIVs), despite their historically stable reputation and minimal subprime exposure, were impacted by the 2007 asset-backed commercial paper market turmoil during the financial crisis.
The episode tracks the turn in the housing market.
Moody's was chasing revenue.
This episode discusses credit default swaps, specifically the pay-as-you-go version introduced in 2005, as part of a reading from the Financial Crisis Inquiry Report.
This episode examines the deterioration of lending standards and disclosure practices in mortgage securitization leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, as documented in the Financial Crisis Inquiry Report.
This episode examines how lax mortgage industry standards and poor loan documentation during the 2000s housing bubble created environments conducive to widespread fraud, as detailed in the Financial Crisis Inquiry Report.
This episode explores the history and mechanics of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), from their creation in 1987 to their evolution into multi-sector securities and early challenges.