From Newsweek a chilling collection of photos from America in Recession. Check it out, it is seriously haunting, and almost as telling as the images from New Orleans from a few years ago. Encapsulating the stubborn, irrational(?) pride of the American people unfolds the following story, which struck me as the stuff of timeless literature:
Wall Street specialized in slicing mortgages into complex derivatives, a process that made it easy to forget that real people lay at the end of the chain. When Carlene Balderrama failed to make payments on the home (shown above) where she and her husband and their 24-year-old son lived, the bank foreclosed. The house was set to be auctioned on July 23, 2008, but just hours before the auction began, 53-year-old Balerrama killed herself with her husband's rifle. She faxed a letter to her mortgage company first, telling them that "by the time they foreclosed on the house today" she'd be dead. She wrote a suicide letter to her family, asking that they "take the [life] insurance money and pay for the house".
Apparently, given the way Mrs Balderrama died, her family did not receive any insurance money.
PS. Yes, I couldn't resist not posting. See, blogging is as addictive as smoking...
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