Blumberg described it as trying to answer the question "why are they lending money to people who can't afford to pay it back?"
The episode's name "The Giant Pool of Money" is derived from the description used in the show of fixed-income securities; it was identified in passing with the global saving glut.
The show does not lay blame on the financiers directly, going so far as to say "Let me just say, they’re aware that there’s a certain irony, giving awards to the instrument that almost destroyed the world’s economy.
After some background on what caused a shift in capital to mortgages, which they hypothesize to be Alan Greenspan's keeping fed funds rates low during the early 2000s, the show moves to Mike Francis, a Wall Street financier who worked at Morgan Stanley.
After describing that area of the chain, they moved on to a CDO investment management firm run by Jim Finkel of Dynamic Credit, LLC.
On October 3, 2008, This American Life broadcast "Another Frightening Show About the Economy",[10] examining what regulators could have done to prevent the economic crisis.
Finally, on June 5, 2009, "The Watchmen"[12] aired and examined the role of Congress and regulators since the creation of the American financial system in the 1930s.