Standard and Poor’s is the first rating agency to face civil fraud charges from the federal government. The Justice Department filed a civil complaint against the company on Monday. It’s the first federal enforcement action against a credit rating firm since the financial crisis almost five years ago.

Alan Blinder, Princeton professor, Wall Street Journal columnist, and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, explains how the worst economic crisis in postwar American history happened, what the government did to address it, and what is still left to do. In After the Music Stopped: The Financial Crisis, the Response, and the Work Ahead Blinder argues that the U.S. financial system became too complex and too unregulated, which created a perfect storm beginning in 2007. He makes the case for government intervention and explains how it prevented a total financial meltdown.

Susan Will, assistant professor of sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a co-editor of the new book How They Got Away With It: White Collar Criminals and the Financial Meltdown, and Saskia Sassen, sociology professor at Columbia University and contributor to the book, discuss what brought about the economic crisis of 2008.

John Lanchester talks about Capital, his sweeping new social novel set in London at the height of the financial crisis in 2008. The economic shift plays out among the residents of Pepys Road, London—a banker and his posh wife, an old woman and her graffiti-artist grandson, Pakistani shop owners, a refugee who works as the meter maid, a young soccer star from Senegal.

The fallout from JPMorgan’s incredible $2 billion trading loss is officially underway: three-high ranking officials are set to resign and damage control is in full-effect. Michael Greenberger, financial law professor at the University of Maryland School of Law and former regulator at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission discusses how the banking giant could have avoided this historic trading blunder and what banking reforms loom on the horizon.

Nobel Prize–winning economist Paul Krugman looks at the economic slump and discusses ways he thinks we can lift ourselves out of it. In End This Depression Now! he argues that a quick, strong recovery is possible if our leaders can find the "intellectual clarity and political will" to restore the economy.

The Treasury Department is launching a sale of $6 billion of the $41.8 billion in common stock it holds in insurance giant American International Group Inc., which received the biggest bailout of the financial crisis in 2008.

Recap from It's a Free Country.

Welcome to Politics Bites, where every afternoon at It's A Free Country, we bring you the unmissable quotes from the morning's political conversations on WNYC. Today on the Brian Lehrer Show, Eric Schneiderman, New York State Attorney General and  co-chair of the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group, talked about his appointment to co-chair the federal working group examining mortgage fraud.

The Journal of Consumer Research recently published a study called "Overestimating Others' Willingness to Pay" which outlines the "overvaluing bias": the tendency to overvalue what another person would pay by nearly 40 percent. While this phenomenon is not new to social psychologists, it clearly influenced the years of easy credit and has more broadly moved Americans away from cash to credit cards.

Regardless of where the Occupy movement decides to fall on issues, and even if it got well-organized overnight, remaining a protest movement that does not mobilize toward electing friendly politicians or enacting friendly legislation will get them nowhere.

On today's second Backstory, we'll look at the latest efforts to stabilize the Eurozone as the debt crisis there continues. Peter Spiegel, Brussels Bureau Chief for the Financial Times, gives us an update on the first day of meetings of European leaders in Brussels, and whether a proposed overhaul of the European treaty is likely to find support there.

After a long court battle, Bloomberg.com has obtained crucial details about Federal Reserve lending during the financial crisis. We now know which banks got what amount of money. That's information lawmakers didn't have when they were crafting financial regulations. Brooke spoke with Bloomberg's Bob Ivry, who says that if law makers had known more - the financial regulations we have now might look very different. 

Stateless – Ariel

Bloomberg News reports what the Federal Reserve wouldn't: that the United States' central bank committed $7.77 trillion to bailing out the financial industry in the wake of the 2008 crisis, netting banks $13 billion in profits in the process.

The Fed's bailout package was more than ten times ...

Wall Street analyst Mike Mayo, who worked at six Wall Street firms, analyzing banks and protesting against bad practices for two decades, discusses the role of finance and banks in the US. In Exile on Wall Street: One Analysts Fight to Save Big Banks from Themselves   he lays out practices that have harmed capitalism and the banking sector and reveals the inner workings of the big banks. He also analyzes the fallout from the market crash, points out the holes that remain in the system, and offers practical solutions.

It's the day before Thanksgiving and many of us will be spending the day preparing for our holiday feast. But for millions of Americans the tables may be more bare this year. With the economy still weak, and federal and state budgets for charity services cut, many local food banks and food pantries are seeing an increase in demand. But they don't have enough food on their shelves to keep up.

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, Wall Street executives tried to deflect the blame onto various culprits — government-sponsored enterprises like Fannie May and Freddie Mac for keeping interest rates low, consumers who lied about their credit history, or annual income. But Michael Lewis, former CEO of failed bank IndyMAC, isn't blaming consumers or investors. Lewis, who has been accussed of fraud and misleading investors, is pointing the finger at regulators.

With Silvio Berlusconi officially submitting his resignation this weekend, the Mario Monti era begins in Italy. The interim prime minister's first task will be to form a new government to enforce the country's recently approved austerity package to get the country's debt burden under control. But who is Italy's new leader? And will his new government be enough to prevent a further crisis in the euro zone?

Chairman of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission and former two-term California State Treasurer Phil Angelides discusses the global financial crisis the responses to it--including the Euro Zone debt crisis and the Occupy Wall Street protests.

The Obama administration announced Monday that it will try and expand HARP, the Home Affordable Refinance Program, to reach to at least one million more people. HARP was introduced in 2009 to help underwater borrowers refinance their mortgages. At the time the administration predicted HARP would help millions of homeowners. But after two and a half years, less than 900,000 homeowners have refinanced under HARP. New changes to HARP will make it possible for homeowners whose mortgages are severely underwater to participate.