debt

Ward Cunningham explains the history and intent of the debt metaphor, which he coined while refactoring the WyCash product. He says debt means code reflecting an incomplete understanding of the problem, not sloppy programming.

Adam Tornhill's GOTO Copenhagen 2019 talk on how to prioritize technical debt in large codebases. It argues for combining code complexity with change frequency (hotspots) from version control data, rather than trying to quantify debt in the abstract.

Not Just Bikes explains how many American suburbs, built all at once rather than incrementally, cannot cover their infrastructure costs and survive on growing debt. It draws on Strong Towns' work on the growth Ponzi scheme.

An animated documentary by Paul Grignon explaining how modern money is created through bank lending as debt. This is a combined upload of the revised 2009 edition.

Paul Grignon's animated documentary presenting his view of how banks create money as debt and why that system requires continuous growth. It outlines the historical background of modern banking.

A clip of Yanis Varoufakis answering a question about China versus the EU on debt conditions. He contrasts Chinese non-interventionist lending with EU conditionality, drawing on the Piraeus port.

David Graeber's Talks at Google presentation on his book Debt: The First 5,000 Years, covering the history of debt, the myth of barter and the Jubilee tradition.

Tom Chi gives the opening talk of a Foresight Institute competition on clean energy and clean air, framing excess CO2 as a carbon debt to repay and discussing large-scale tree planting, including by drone.

John Oliver covers student debt and the for-profit colleges that push students into it, including Corinthian-style schools and ITT Tech. It is a segment from Last Week Tonight.

Tom Scott visits Yale's archives to look at a 367-year-old bond from a Dutch water authority that is still paying interest. Finance professor Geert Rouwenhorst explains how it works.

A 30-minute condensed version of the documentary I.O.U.S.A., which examines the growing US national debt and its consequences.

Ray Dalio's 30-minute animated video explains how the economy works through credit, debt, interest rates, and short- and long-term cycles. It is based on his template for understanding the economy.

An animated 44-minute summary of Ray Dalio's book Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order. It lays out the Big Cycle of rising and declining nations, covering debt cycles, internal conflict, and shifts in global power over the past 500 years.

An independent feature documentary in which 23 economists, advisers and financiers discuss how the financial system works and what a more just economic model might look like. It covers money creation, debt and the aftermath of the financial crisis.

A scene from The Big Short in which Jared Vennett pitches credit default swaps on mortgage bonds to a hedge fund team, using a Jenga tower to illustrate collateralized debt obligations.

A 2006 Saturday Night Live fake infomercial with Steve Martin and Amy Poehler selling the sure-fire way out of debt: don't buy stuff.

The classic 1950s recording of Tennessee Ernie Ford singing 'Sixteen Tons', a song about a coal miner trapped in company-store debt.

Episode 4 of Mike Maloney's Hidden Secrets of Money, explaining how currency is created through a chain of IOUs among the Treasury, banks and the Federal Reserve. It covers bonds, Fed checks, debt, taxes and fractional reserve lending, from a gold-and-silver advocate's viewpoint.

Mark Blyth's Talks at Google presentation based on his book on austerity. He argues that government debt came largely from bailing out banks, and that budget cuts are a misguided response to the financial crisis.

A 30-minute animated film explaining how money, banking and the Federal Reserve work and arguing that the American economy is heading for collapse. It is opinionated and has a strong point of view.

The first part of Extra History's animated miniseries on the South Sea Bubble. It explains how England's government debt led Robert Harley to turn to financier John Blunt, whose schemes began inflating artificial demand for shares.

A three-minute Positive Money UK explainer arguing that the commercial banking system, where banks create most money as debt, redistributes income from the bottom 90 percent to the top 10 percent through interest.

A Google Tech Talk by sleep researcher Dr. William Dement on healthy sleep and performance. He argues sleep debt must be repaid and describes the three characteristics of healthy sleep.

Kevin Rose interviews Chris Sacca, founder of Lowercase Capital, for his Foundation series. The conversation covers Sacca's path in venture capital and angel investing, including his early financial ups and downs.

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on auto lending, showing how lenders steer vulnerable buyers into subprime loans and crushing debt. It uses comedy sketches to explain the practices.

Hans Rosling uses augmented-reality animation to show 200 countries over 200 years in four minutes, built from 120,000 data points. It tracks life expectancy and income to show the world's development.

A rap battle in which John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek debate the causes of boom and bust, stimulus, and bailouts. It was produced by Econstories to teach the two schools of thought.

Not Just Bikes explains the Strong Towns argument that car-dependent American suburbs cost more to maintain than they generate in taxes. It describes the growth Ponzi scheme that props up municipal finances.

A feature-length documentary on how the City of London and Britain's overseas territories built a global web of offshore secrecy jurisdictions after the empire declined. It traces how this network captured and hid wealth from around the world.

The first video in Not Just Bikes' Strong Towns series explains the financial instability of North American cities, based on Strong Towns research. It argues that low-density suburban growth costs more to maintain than it brings in.

Hans Rosling uses the Gapminder animated-data tool to debunk myths about world development, with sportscaster-like energy. It shows trends in health, income and child survival across countries.

Jean-Marc Jancovici lectures at ENS Paris on whether energy use, jobs and growth can all be preserved. He argues for a physical approach to economics, since resource depletion and climate limits make perpetual GDP growth unrealistic.

Sociologist and comedian Harald Eia argues in a TEDxOslo talk that Nordic social democracies produce more rich people per capita than the US or UK. He credits high taxes, welfare and strong unions for creating a safety net that enables risk taking.

A clip from the 2011 film Margin Call in which senior partners hold an emergency meeting and decide to sell off toxic assets immediately. It is set at the start of the 2008 financial crisis.

A hip-hop music video from EconStories in which Keynes and Hayek rap-battle over how to handle recessions and government spending. It is the second round after the first rap battle.

Mark Blyth's 2016 Brown University lecture on global Trumpism, explaining the rise of populism through economics, the decline of Western middle classes and revolt against technocracy.

First session of MIT 15.401 Finance Theory I (Fall 2008) taught by Andrew Lo, giving a course overview and introducing core finance concepts. The course ran during the 2007-08 financial crisis.

A clip from the 2011 film Margin Call in which a firm's CEO, played by Jeremy Irons, tells a senior executive about the cycles of financial crashes. Kevin Spacey's character says he wants out, and the scene ends on the line that it is just money.

An RSA Animate video that illustrates a talk by geographer David Harvey on the crises of capitalism. It covers creative destruction, wage stagnation masked by credit, and the search for a more just economic order.

A short excerpt of Jon Stewart interviewing former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers about the causes of inflation and whether workers or corporate profits are to blame. It comes from an episode of The Problem With Jon Stewart.