With recent developments in the financial world grabbing people's attention, it seems that now would be a good time to let you, dear reader, know about two websites that deal with that area. One is a site that's been around for a while and is a great resource for information on securities lawsuits; another is a newcomer focused on the recently-created Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP, aka the "Bank Bailout").

Stanford Law School's Securities Class Action Clearinghouse focuses on class action securities fraud actions filed in federal court. The heart and soul of the Clearinghouse is its Index of Findings -- the Clearinghouse has over 28,000 (according to the site) complaints, orders, briefs, and other filings from federal class-action securities lawsuits available for free -- items that can often be hard to find otherwise, especially at the trial court level. The Clearinghouse also offers statistics on federal securities class-actions (the amount of litigation in 2008 was at its highest since the early part of the decade -- surprise!) and some articles and research papers on securities law.

BailoutSleuth was started by Mark Cuban to keep track of which institutions are receiving money from TARP. It's in blog form, so it sometimes takes a little digging through the site to get the information, though the site does occasionally post a "master list of banks getting TARP money". This is a useful site to keep an eye on if you're interested in TARP-related developments.

-- Fred Dingledy