Resources to help you deal with the financial crisis

By Rick Morris

Our FDH Lounge Ultimate Links Page is now up to 1,256 links in all. I've said repeatedly that you could not have a better home page for your browser and it is my personal home page. With almost an equal number of sports and non-sports links, it has the greatest possible blend of usefulness and entertainment on all subjects.

With the global financial crisis that has been building for over a year and has crested in the last three weeks, people are increasingly looking for answers in terms of both the big picture and their own individual situations. As such, we wanted to put together one easy-to-bookmark page for you here, sort of a microcosm of The Ultimate Links Page focusing purely on the 41 links that make up our "Web Tools: Markets/Financial" section. We should note also that some of our other sections may be helpful to you in the same area, including "General News/Media" and "Web Tools: Consumer/Career."

Those 41 links, including some just updated today, are listed in the same fashion with the other 1,205 on the page, with just the title for the link and no description. It's frankly impossible to list any amount of detail with these links and have them all fit on the same page. But we're going to take them here and organize them by sub-category:

^The present financial crisis: Our FAQ about the financial crisis from right here on The Lounge is the only long-form, comprehensive view of this situation that we have encountered anywhere.

^ General financial news/analysis: AOL Money (with written and video content and their sub-site Blogging Stocks), Bloomberg (whose financial news channel on cable/satellite television can be viewed on this site through an online stream), BusinessWeek magazine (and their new sub-site which organizes news into easy-to-follow categories, Business Exchange), CNBC (with written and video content), CNNMoney.com (a service of CNN, Fortune magazine and Money magazine, with video and written content), Forbes (with written and video content), International Business Times (with written content from a global perspective), Investor's Business Daily (with written and video content), Marketwatch (with written and video content), Smart Money (with written and video content -- and their sub-site Smart Money Daily, which examines finance from more of an individual point of view), The Big Money (a part of the Slate media family, with written and video content), The Deal (with written and video content) and The Motley Fool (with written and video content).

^ A daily financial news catch-all: Real Clear Markets follows in the footsteps of other members of the "Real Clear" family that cover politics, sports and geopolitics. Essentially, it's a compendium of some of the most influential financial news and analysis that can be found online and it is updated twice daily on weekdays and also once on Saturdays.

^ Nouriel Roubini's family of blogs: Nouriel Roubini is a professor of economics at NYU and he has correctly predicted every aspect of the present financial crisis as it has happened over the past few years. Talk show host Glenn Beck has featured his analysis prominently. His Global Economonitor blog features coverage of the financial picture from Roubini and associates of his, as do the following sub-sites: Asia, Emerging Markets, Europe, Finance Markets, Global Macro, Latin America, United States and a blog devoted to Roubini's writings and media appearances.

^ Miscellaneous specialized financial news/analysis: Dealbreaker (billed as a Wall Street tabloid), Financial Express (financial news that revolves largely around India), The Consumerist (a consumer-oriented blog in the Gawker media family), Valleywag (billed as Silicon Valley's tech gossip rag).

^ Resources to help you directly manage your financial options: Bank directory from Yahoo, Brokerage directory from Yahoo, Insurance directory from Yahoo, Investment services directory from Yahoo, Mortgage directory from Yahoo, Moving.com (lets you compare quotes from different moving companies), Realtor.com (lets you research home values and realtors), Trulia (real estate search tools), Yahoo morgage calculator (lets you calculate different mortgage options) and Zillow (real estate search tools).