Bad Banks on LeShow

On the October 2, 2011 episode of LeShow, Harry Shearer's interviews Yves Smith, a financial expert w/ experience at companies such as McKinsey & Co., Goldman Sachs, and Sumitomo Bank. If you appreciate the smart and straightforward perspective Elizabeth Warren brings to credit- and debt-related issues, you must listen to Smith's insights into the U.S. and European banking crisis. She's the author of ECONned and the blog Naked Capitalism. Her earlier conversation with Shearer about U.S. housing foreclosures ("the new F-bomb") is also worth checking out.

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LeShow has earned a regular spot in my podcast rotation. The weekly radio program occasionally centers on an expert like Smith or perhaps a jazz musician; more often, however, it consist of Shearer reading choice excerpts from the week's news. He's a satirist (not nearly as broad as you'll find on the Comedy Central "news" programs), and has a knack for highlighting details or entire stories that have been given short shrift in the popular press. Two of his regular features are called "The Buried Lead" and "News from Outside the Bubble." KCRW describes the show as a "romp through the worlds of media, politics, sports and show business, leavened with an eclectic mix of mysterious music." LeShow is broadcast on many NPR stations and available on the internet and via podcast.

In addition to LeShow and his roles on The Simpsons, Shearer produced The Big Uneasy, a documentary film about levy system in New Orleans (his adopted home) during hurricane Katrina.