I just read one of the best articles...

...on the whole financial mess by Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone. It's called The Big Takeover and you can also find it on RealClearPolitics.com. It's long but readable and explains in English how AIG spun out of control and how this whole bailout process got underway. It gets a little conspiratorial near the end, especially about Paulson and Goldman, and I'm not much for conspiracy theories. He also doesn't talk much about the role of Bernanke in all this which is not an unimportant omission. But I still liked it and would recommend it to anyone trying to make sense of all this.