I have to admit that I rarely do blogs on economic issues, mostly because in researching it, I generally find completely contradictory information and it's hard to know where the truth lies. However, I've heard more and more rumblings about the sub-prime market lately and I found this essay to be fairly instructive...

The shock waves emanating from the sub-prime mortgage earthquake are now spreading around the financial world. The collateral damage is being unveiled so quickly that it is difficult keeping up with all the collapsed hedge funds, injured banks, and defaulting mortgage brokers. It is difficult to make sense of all of this, partly because financial reporting in today's business publications is almost non-existent. Reporters usually repeat what is in some company's press release, and only a few with experience and investigative instincts can really go below the surface and make sense of things. To be fair to the reporters, this crisis is a bit different, because the hedge fund industry is deliberately and obstinately opaque. Hedge funds reveal little about what they own or how much they borrow. That iron curtain of information about hedge fund exposures is making this crisis much worse. Read on...