$700 billion for WHAT?

With all of this stock market crash news resonating, I must admit I feel pretty dumb. I'm a 21-year-old college student who doesn't know jack about the stock market. And reading the Orlando Sentinel really doesn't help me on this one. In a story on the government's bailout an Orlando Sentinel writer wrote:


"The deficit for this budget year, which ends on Sept. 30, is expected to rise to $407 billion, a figure that is more than double the $161.5 billion imbalance for 2007, reflecting what the economic slowdown and this year's $168 billion economic stimulus program are already doing to the government's books." (blogger added bold)


Alone, this single sentence isn't so bad, but try attaching it to an article that includes other overwhelming numbers, such as the trusty $700 billion article topic. And even if the sentence does make sense, five numbers in one sentence pretty much guarantees that somebody, somewhere is confused.

So I went elsewhere for my news. I went to the New York Times. It was published a day later than the Orlando Sentinel, but maybe it just needed extra polishing before publication...

or not.

The article's lede left me sifting for something solid to hold onto:

"WASHINGTON — Bipartisan support appeared to be emerging Sunday among American lawmakers to approve quickly a vast bailout of financial institutions in the United States. The Bush administration has proposed granting unfettered authority for the Treasury Department to buy up to $700 billion in distressed mortgage-related assets from private firms as part of a program that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said 'has to work.'"

The whopper of a 2-sentence, 62-word lede left my heading spinning. The scary thing is, I found myself asking where this article's editor was. Are words such as "vast" and "distressed" really necessary where they are in this lede? And I hope we have "American" lawmakers! It's true that there is some degree of "bipartisan support" happening here, but it's not lede-worthy; this article doesn't deal with the presidential debate.

Ok. That lede is just too wordy. I certainly do not want to read the rest of the article, but I still really want to know what's going on.

I find myself stumbling into the arms of The Wall Street Journal. They took a much better approach to this: Q and A. The lede addresses me directly by acknowledging the "esoteric" jargon of the stock market. At least I'm not alone here.

The structure of the article is risky; the paper risks belittling the reader. But the questions were well-informed. The answers were relatable.

Finally! The stock market journey comes to a close, and I feel a little less ignorant to our country's financial crisis. I just hope I don't have to pull $700 billion out of my pocket!