Word: strike
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...have entered the one-strike-and-you're-out era. One lost job. One medical emergency. One bad risk or misjudgment of the heart. "I've seen more people lose their houses in the past year than in the previous nine years put together," Wagoner said one recent afternoon, as gray skies hung low over the vast horizon. "It sounds crazy," he continued, "but I'd say unless you're making over $350,000 a year, the more you're paid, the more vulnerable you are. If you lose a job, you're going to have a hard time finding...
...strike economy, it's not just the subprime suckers going down. Trouble stretches beyond the province of liar loans, condo-flipping and the collateralized debt obligations that no one fully understands. A hard rain now falls on the just as well as the unjust. Consumers have stopped spending, factories have stopped operating, employers have stopped hiring - and home values continue to fall. For millions of people, the margin between getting by and getting buried is becoming as thin and as bloody as a razor blade...
...other day," Wagoner says, "I had a visit from a corporate executive who moved to town and bought a house." Which should be fine; a big wheel need not fear a big mortgage. But this guy's one strike was moving from Florida, where the real estate market is so screwed up that judges in one county are hearing nearly 1,000 foreclosure cases a day. Mr. Exec was stuck with his old house too, and that one was dragging him down, down - until there was nothing left to do but pay a visit to the bankruptcy attorney. " I would...
...This is a harrowing experience, tightrope walking over the financial abyss. American Dreamers are optimistic, but few can tread that wire now without looking down in panic. We're geared to believe that risk begets reward and our tomorrows are brighter than our todays. One-strike-and-you're-out is a neck-snapping reversal for a culture accustomed to assuming that fate is a welcome friend...
...brutal game, though, in which a single strike makes you a loser. And that brutality explains another strain of anger beginning to bubble up from the newly bankrupted. People like Paula Stevens and Joseph Zachery weren't flipping houses or lying on their loan applications. They didn't pile up mountains of credit-card debt. They worked hard for what they had and shared their modest portions with others. Each readily admits to making occasional mistakes with money, but even Warren Buffett has made occasional mistakes with money. Their bitterness stems from a feeling that they've held up their...