Netflix is the new breadline.

Mark Clothier and John Heylar:

In early 2008, David Roberts' morning routine at the Ridgewood train station was as unchanged as the view from its platform, which overlooks a downtown anchored by the Daily Treat diner and a 77-year-old movie theater.

Roberts would sip coffee, eat a corn muffin, scan the Financial Times and step aboard the 7:50 train. This was not the same trip he had made for the 14 years he worked for three Wall Street firms.

This was a commute to nowhere.

Like many of his neighbors in Ridgewood, Roberts had been thrown out of work after the credit markets seized up last year, joining thousands of commuters in the competition for jobs that don't exist anymore.

Have you seen Tokyo Sonata?

Robert Shiller:

The ability to short is essential to an efficient market, otherwise there's nothing to stop zealots from pricing things abnormally high.

I'm worried about the anger that's developing. People have tolerated a lot of inequality, but in light of recent events, I could see social changes.

A note from Mike Rorty:

There’s a real tendency to Other subprime mortgage holders. They are idiots, crooks, dupes, minorities, single mothers, easily mislead, liars and criminals, etc. But right here, 28% of all mortgage foreclosures, and 60% of subprime foreclosures, are from people who started with a prime mortgage. Those are the Us – good credit scores, 20% down, pay the bills on time.

A mind grenade from Gertrude Himmelfarb:

It is said that we need the best as a measure against which to test the second-best, to show us how far we are deviating from the best. In this sense, the best is the ideal to which the second-best aspires. But if the ideal is impractical because inconsonant with human nature, how or why should we aspire to it? The case for the second-best goes beyond practicality. More serious is the fact that the attempt to realise the unrealisable is likely to be pernicious.