Maybe it is just because I am so physically close to Wall Street, but the swings in the DOW can’t help but register in my peripheral vision.

Andrew Leonard has a very nice piece on Salon explaining what is going on. He uses the metaphor of the Super Bowl to show how the market got rigged, allowing even a stock market ludite like myself see the situation clearly. As an extra bonus the term “tranches” is defined.  (I know that is going to come in handy soon – probably in a foreign policy context).  The hardest thing to do in a financial story is let your audience in across their own experience. In five-element story terms – to provide a point of view that allows your audience to see an exotic landscape of numbers and arcane terms in a way that makes them feel equal to the challenge of overcoming the obstacles and leaves them ready to take action. That is the Heroes task. And it is particularly important in budget crunching stories because wealth directly relates to Hero (it was PRINCE CHARMING not Pauper Charming that rescued Snow White.)