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"Education is always a part of journalism, but we really have hit another level with this crisis," says Alexis Glick, anchor and Vice President of Business News for FOX Business Network. "We're at an unprecedented moment; this is history in the making. And the truth is nobody on Wall Street or in the White House really, fully understands what's going on or why. So trying to make sense of it to viewers is something you're working on all the time."

Typically with big, complicated new stories, perhaps the most important service that journalists can provide their audience is context -- what all is involved, how things are supposed to work, how they broke down, who are the significant players. But with the ongoing credit crunch/banking collapse/housing bubble-burst, the context and explanations and summaries and background and everything else just seems endless, circular and often contradictory. It can create a feeling of the more you learn, the less you know.

"That's a real problem. What people are looking for is a strong sense of where things are going, what needs to happen next to stop the bleeding and start rebuilding. And that's not just a feeling out there among average people who, understandably, haven't spent all their spare time studying all the complexities of America's financial system. That's the same feeling people who work on Wall Street have.

"What we need is confidence in our leaders. We're looking in every direction for leadership. Executives are playing duck and cover, politicians are caught up in partisan bickering. It's left us feeling directionless, like there's nobody really steering the ship."

But rather that stress out over this historica economic crisis, let's just be honest and admit none of us is ever really going to understand it and stop trying to talk about the bundling of mortgage-based securities or what level of liquidity is needed to float short-term loans. Iinstead of treating the news like the final exam of a course we've been skipping all semester and now suddenly have to desperately cram for, let's just relax and go back to watching the news the way we used to watch the news --with an air of casual distraction.

"I do think maybe people are paying a little too much attention to every little detail that comes along. All the attention and anxiety is creating a situation where psychology is overtaking reality.

"Everybody's so anxious and confused and they just need to take a breath and remind themselves that reality is still reality. Kellogs still makes corn flakes."