Claude Fischer:

Our ideology of being the exceptional land of opportunity is a hangover from a time when it was true -- but is no more.

The Economist's Washington Correspondent:

I thought I was unlucky graduating into the tech bust. I had no idea. Of course, the past ten years hasn't been lost in the way that the next ten years might be.

Alice Gregory:

I have spent my entire adult existence in a recession. The stock market crashed when I was a senior in college. I belong to a microgeneration whose moneymaking life has taken place in a pessimistic, alarmist era strewn with the detritus of failed, deliberately convoluted financial instruments. Like most people I talk to, I assume the forces that control the market are at best random and at worst rigged.

Michael Osinski:

When you're close to the money, you get the first cut. Oyster farmers eat lots of oysters, don't they?

Decius:

We're in a bad part of the cycle of human society. You and I are young enough that we'll see the other side of it, but we'll be old when we do.