Word: spiked
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Ginger: What was your favorite bit of the movie? Spike: I didn't have one. There were too many things happening all the time: fireworks, and them going up on poles in the air. They didn't need all that. They should have more movie bits and less concert bits...
...aren't going to help you have an interesting conversation with your child, nor do you have to monitor them for inappropriateness. To test this theory, we put their new movie, Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience, through its paces, asking for reviews from parent (me), target audience (tweens Spike, 11 and his sister Ginger, 8) and veteran movie critic (Richard Corliss). The brothers Jonas, in case you've missed them, comprise Joe, the junior Mick Jagger of the group; Kevin, guitarist and second-string show pony; and Nick, the cute, sensitive, cleaned-up Kurt Cobainy one. You discover this...
...thing that all financial calamities have in common is that they are unexpected, at least by the officials who are supposed to keep an eye out for these things. There were no plans for oil prices to spike up before the Arab Oil Embargo in the 1970s and no roadmap to follow after the S&L crisis the following decade. Banks can be brought down by fraud and errors in large gambles made on proprietary trading desks. Most of the things that cause systemic failure are unexpected and therefore cannot be prevented...
...That's true not just in Florida but the entire country. A lack of affordable homes helped spawn the economic crisis in the first place. The past two Presidents made growing homeownership rates a core goal, but to achieve that, they allowed overly loose lending standards. That caused a spike in demand for houses, which in turn raised home prices so steeply that the modest-income people whom Washington hoped to add to the homeowner rolls couldn't afford them - or eventually couldn't afford the monthly payments they had taken on. Meanwhile, affordable home construction became passé. What developer...
What's changed? The economy. Subprime loans were written to the weakest borrowers, so they stumbled first, especially since many were set-up with an interest-rate spike after two or three years. In January, nearly 40% of all subprime loans were either behind on payments or in foreclosure. Now, though, with companies cutting back work hours and unemployment hitting 7.6%, borrowers of all stripes are running into trouble. "Originally, the loan product was driving a lot of the delinquencies," says Steve Berg, managing director of loan-tracker LPS Applied Analytics. "Now you have widespread house-price deterioration and people...