As with many business or financial story, the meltdown that just happened on Wall Street is often difficult to digest, what with all the jargon and the complex methodologies used by investment and insurance companies to get to where they are now. Does anyone really know what a “derivative” is or what a “credit default swap” really means? And who the hell are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac?

Reading the papers and watching the news reports about the Crash of 2008 can often feel like they were written and produced by journalists who exist in a parallel world, a surreal, separate universe populated by Jargonites.

And so, naturally, I turn to Jon Stewart.

But the collapse of a 158-year-old investment bank (Lehman Brothers) and the near collapse of AIG, the largest insurance company in the world (and in the Philippines apparently), are, evidently enough, important stories that will have serious implications on how many among us will live in the days and years ahead. Jon Stewart, bless his witty heart, can't do the explaining alone.

And so, naturally, I turn to the Internet.

There, I found the column by CNN's Glenn Beck who used, of all things, a Tickle Me Elmo as a device to illustrate what's happening. (Now I know what it means when someone says “Explain this to me like I'm a five-year-old.”)

New York Magazine's Daily Intel had an idiot's guide published weeks ago about Fannie May and Freddie Mac, whose collapse were the precursor of what just happened on Wall Street.

But if you have enough time and patience, head over to the financial section of The New York Times. There, you'll find detailed explanation about the crisis, its impact, and its implications. Check out as well the blog of Floyd Norris, the Times's financial columnist who is able to cut through the jargon and tell us how and why this happened.

Speaking of columnists, this crisis has once again reaffirmed why the world needs them. Nicholas Kristoff penned a humorous (more like sarcastic) op-ed on Lehman Brothers that, in simple, funny language, managed to convince us that the multi-million dollar salary of its CEO was not money well-spent.

Paul Wilmott, an expert on quantitative finance, whatever that is, suggests that “we have to address the bad side of greed” after this. Journalist Daniel Ben-Ami, author of Cowardly Capitalism: The Myth of the Global Financial Casino, pricks what he calls the five myths of the Wall Street crash. (No, he says, the subprime debacle is too simplistic a reason for all this mess.)

As can be expected, there's now so much hand-wringing about the future of capitalism.

And speaking of capitalism, it amuses me that this crisis is something that Jose Maria Sison, the exiled communist leader, has repeatedly pointed out in the past -- in statements and missives (such as this one) that we often dismiss as strident, outdated, out-of-touch, unrealistic, etc. - that the US economy will one day be brought to its knees by its own greed and malfeasance.

Of course, Karl Marx essentially said the same thing eons ago, at the time of serfs and vassals. But instead of dismissing Sison's opinion as anachronistic and thus have no place in a time "like this", it would probably do us some good to concede the point that the events the past week just underscored the fact that the methods by which men fulfill their greed may have changed but the madness that unbridled capitalism brings about has not.

Carlos H. Conde is a journalist based in Manila.