Heaven forbid that a single day should go by without a deep new learning curve about the financial crisis. In today’s New York Times, revelations that the Fed’s intervention with banks, going back to late 2007, was exponentially broader, more global and more expensive than anyone previously knew. (“Fed Documents Breadth of Emergency Measures”)

With so much public screaming going on about “bailouts” and spending, much of it totally uninformed, I decided long ago it was important to me to at least understand the basics of events leading up to the Great Recession, Second Great Depression or (as I’m now thinking of it), the “Greatest Depression.”

What’s been useful, besides reading the newspapers and magazines I regularly consume, are a couple of documentaries. “Inside Job,” a film remarkably now into its third week at Keystone Art Cinema, laid out the relationship in artistically graphic terms between borrowers, lenders and investors. Narrated by Matt Damon, it explains derivatives, credit default swaps, mortgage-backed securities and other instruments and their regulation or lack thereof.

My only criticism of the film is that a real journalist should have conducted the interviews. The film’s producers ought to have ponied up for real talent, such as Vanity Fair editor Bethany McLean, who outed Enron in Fortune Magazine in 2001 and is coauthor of a new book about the financial crisis, “All the Devils Are Here.”

I presume it was Mr. Damon conducting the interviews, which as a result, are often less-than-professional in that they’re poorly edited and overwrought. But overall he gets an A for effort, and the film is definitely worth seeing if you want to understand just how the players on Wall Street cruelly screwed you and me on Main Street.

PBS’s Frontline documentary, “Inside the Meltdown” was also very instructive, in that it laid out the timeline of the financial crisis, from the sale of investment bank Bear Stearns to JP Morgan Chase for $2 a share, to the federal bailouts of mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to the sale of investment bank Merrill Lynch to Bank of America, to the breathtaking bankruptcy of investment bank Lehman Brothers, to the rescue of “big insurance company” AIG. (Best of all, you can watch the entire film online at no charge.)

So after all this personal investment in understanding the financial crisis, today I read the NYT article referenced in the first paragraph above, which says (among much more), “In the first week of the Commercial Paper Funding Facility, the Fed bought more than $225 billion in debt. Companies ranging from Ohio’s Fifth Third Bank to the best-known bank franchises of Europe and Asia, like Royal Bank of Scotland and Sumitomo, were the primary occupants of the new lifeboat, along with the finance arms of the nation’s hard-pressed automakers.”

Good Lord! “The primary occupants of the new lifeboat”??! What’s a “Commercial Paper Funding Facility”? Just tell it to me straight. My brain is already deep-fried.

And, 5/3 Bank? My bank?! That really brings the crisis close to home.

What ticks me off the most is that these banks and other corporations who have been receiving bailouts with OUR MONEY — that’s YOU AND ME, TAXPAYER — are continuing to spend millions buying the votes of lawmakers from sea to shining sea. IN MY HUMBLE OPINION, any institution receiving taxpayer money to keep itself afloat should be prohibited by law from spending money on political action or lobbying of any kind. That includes direct contributions to candidates as well as contributions to the shadowy Political Action Committees (PACs) distributing their vitriol and lies on OUR PUBLIC AIRWAVES. (“Companies That Got Bailout Money Keep Lobbying”)

None of us can afford to be ignorant about the financial crisis, or worse, to form our opinions from hearsay, partisan entertainer-pundits and “loose cannon” bloggers. It’s a steep curve to learn all this mumbo jumbo, but somebody has to do it.

Replacing the bumper stickers could be an issue!

(A little rusty here… pun intended.)

Since this country seems intent to stay on its 90 year path as a consumer economy, dependent on you and me to buy our way out of the Great Recession (see the Fed Chair Ben Bernanke’s $600 billion purchase of government debt) here are some thoughts for automakers who aren’t yet building what I want to buy.

My current trusty automobile is a 1999 Chevy Prism. The biggest issue it’s had has been a broken blower motor for the heater. And last week we replaced the battery for the second time. Nothing major, or even irritating in the way of repairs. Yet, the clutch is getting iffy, and I’m thinking it may be time to ante up for a replacement car.

I first shopped for a new car when my Prism was just a few years old, only to find showrooms wholly populated with big honkin’ trucks and assorted other gas guzzlers. So I put car shopping on hold.

The Prism’s fuel economy was 41 mph on the highway when it was brand new. The last time we measured gas mileage, on a trip to my sister’s in Iowa, it got 37 mph. So any new car will have to have fuel economy at least that good, and preferably be a hybrid.

Next, I want gadgets. Heated seats, which I’ve lived all my life without, and GPS, Bluetooth and other 21st Century addendum on the dash.

After that, give me four doors, a stick shift, fun color options and a decent price. Throw in good safety and consumer ratings, and I believe you’ll have a sale!