The Week’s Insight

The big news this week, of course, was the economy. Between the $700 billion bailout plan that was proposed and then debated in Congress all week, the failure of U.S. financial institutions and the suggested postponement of the presidential debates because of the financial crisis, an ocean of ink was spilled in delivering the words to analyze the history, ethics, angles, projections and trends of the issue.

Under this ocean of information, a good, succinct graphic can be a lifesaver.

ProPublica led the way this week in presenting a informative bubble graphic showing the history of U.S. financial bailouts. The graphic, featuring colorful bubbles of various sizes to represent the size of past and present bailouts, put into perspective the size of the Treasury Department’s proposed $700 billion bailout plan. The blood-red blob of the Troubled Asset Relief Plan dwarfed its nearest competitor, the 1989 Financial Institutions Reform Recovery and Enforcement Act (i.e the Savings & Loan bailout), decked out in cheerful hot pink. Note that there are four bubbles from 2008 floating in the flotsam.

ProPublica followed up that graphic with an informative chart showing what happened with each industry after their bailout. For example:

The Financial Institutions Reform Recovery and Enforcement Act authorized $166 billion dollars to finance the folding of numerous failed S&Ls. The final tab for the bailout was roughly $153 billion. Of that total, taxpayers were responsible for about $124 billion; the private sector covered the rest.

And if you’re curious on how much the American public is interested in the bailouts, the blog PopLicks provided a line-graph chart comparing Google searches of the bailout vs. searches for information about American Idol alumnus Clay Aiken. Alas, at the time of PopLicks‘ posting, Aiken won the search race by quite a bit. (I went to Google Trends on Friday morning and did the same search: Bailout searches were leading by a small margin.)

Another bit of interest was representation of just how much $700 billion would be worth. The National Priorities Project came up with a calculator that allows readers to plug in their state and what public item $700 billion would pay for in their state. Slate also gave a tally of the U.S. taxpayers’ share in the bailout plan.

Other interesting snapshots this week were posted at the Crooks and Liars blog and Foreign Policy Passport. The former shows the results of a survey that asked Americans their opinion on the economy. Under the category of “getting better” was a single dash: zero percent of Americans think the economy is improving. Ouch. The latter showed a snapshot of Baghdad’s night-light output, that is, the areas in Iraq’s capital that have had consistent electricity. The diminished night-light output, according to the report accompanying the graphic, indicates the level of violence seen in Baghdad during and after the surge. It’s an interesting use of imagery to both study and show what’s going on.

A little creativity helps make complex issues easier to grasp and stirs our imaginations. Hopefully, we’ll be seeing more graphics like this.

If you’ve seen a good graphic that really tells the story of our bigger pictures, let us know!

Image at ProPublica