The federal reserve banks have some good resources, but I would go through these in this order: http://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/default.htm http://ww

The federal reserve banks have some good resources, but I would go through these in this order: http://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/default.htm http://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/default.htm >> http://www.federalreserve.gov/pf/pf.htm http://www.federalreserve.gov/pf/pf.htm http://www.khanacademy.org/#current-economics http://www.khanacademy.org/#current-economics >> http://www.khanacademy.org/#banking-and-money http://www.khanacademy.org/#banking-and-money http://research.stlouisfed.org/ http://research.stlouisfed.org/ To qualify this, I do have a B.S. degree in Econ. [ADDED]: An important component of risk analysis is political risk (but it is often overlooked in discussions dealing with the U.S. due to the perception that it is most stable alternative). There is a fine Wikipedia article that discusses this, and in light of the recent downgrade, may help explain things: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_risk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_risk