This American Life, the public radio show by Ira Glass, has pulled off a winner. With reporters from ProPublica, the nonprofit journalistic organization, it told the story of Magnetar, the hedge fund that gamed the housing bubble.
Bankers who worked on Magnetar deals walked away with their huge bonuses well before disaster struck — or, as the program put it, “bankers made money even when they were buying things that eventually blew up the bank.” Not to mention the economy. And it was all legal.
The radio show concluded with a Broadway song commissioned from a co-author of the satirical musical Avenue Q. Titled Bet Against the American Dream, it distills a complex financial saga to its essence: Those who shorted the housing market shorted the country.
