The economy is an unbridled beast, which upsets me not least for the fact that I can no longer wear my Manchester United shirt in public because of the giant AIG sponsors logo plastered across it. (Honestly, I thought was obnoxious long before the company paid out $165million in tax dollars for their corporate bonuses.)

But what made AIG worthy of a $170 billion bailout in the first place? And are the causes for the economic meltdown so arcane that no one in Washington can understand them either?In her show on Friday, the effervescent Rachel Maddow blamed deregulation for the mess, providing the most comprehensible explanation I’ve heard so far. Here is a quick summary:   

• In the wake of the Great Depression to 1999, there were laws in place that kept commercial banks separate from investment banks separate from insurance firms.
• That changed after the Gramm-Leach-Bliley act was passed and tore down all those partitions between the different financial institutions.
• This allowed huge hybrid financial behemoths like AIG and Citigroup to exist, making mega firms that Wall Street regulators couldn’t keep in check.
• The Commodities Modernization Act of 2000 made the things that  financial companies did to spread their risk around exempt from regulation.
• So with free rein in this wild west of Wall Street, these hybrid financial behemoths penetrated every part of the financial industry and became “too big to fail” when the economy started to tank.
• Hence, companies like AIG have received all that bailout money courtesy of the generous American taxpayers.

Watch the video, if only to hear Rachel Maddow purr.