simon_ I fully agree. This is also what drives me nuts about, for example, NPR's coverage of the crisis. I love the Planet Money team for instance but they inv

simon_ I fully agree. This is also what drives me nuts about, for example, NPR's coverage of the crisis. I love the Planet Money team for instance but they invariable do their "gosh can you believe how nuts this financial stuff is" schtick during each episode of what is otherwise a decent show. I'm tired of hearing a procession of Ira-Glass-cadence-imitating NPR ingenues with gee-golly-wow attitudes interviewing financial pros. Journalists serve as proxies for the reader/viewer/listener. When they do the "this finance stuff is just crazy" routine they imply that we shouldn't have been expected to understand and follow the finance industry in the first place. That implicit expectation of ignorance is the media equivalent of "math is hard". We need to raise expectations of education and comprehension. It's entirely possible to understand this stuff in high school. We should be teaching it in every public school. Of course that would make it harder to get away with stuff. Not surprising then, that we don't teach it in schools today.