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Lately, it has been "back to Charles Dickens" nationally. (Tale of Two Cities, 1859)

The systemic values got crushed when the hyper-volatility and hyper-fast electronic trades went into play - everyone had plenty of warning signals that the Finance sector was pulling forward into a separate class unto themselves, and the people next thought to counter it with big government and 2008 tactics -- big government throwing money at the big behemoth finance interests because the big finance interests bought them. Lookee, lookee the government's still bought out -- but now, like a cornered and dangerous quarry of financial game wardens, it turns around and tries to best the financial game wardens. Meanwhile, we the people are not equipped with a means to break up this scrappy roaring inside the regency game reserve. So we have federal easing going only to banksters and selected pampered industries, while we tough it out on the margins with acorns and cheetos.


The world of stability has been bye-bye after that -- Orwell was like the Jonathan Swift of the 1950's -- Think "Animal Farm" lived out in "1984".

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Yes, amen to that.  I'll pray for your family and your sister-in-law's family too.  

What I was writing above is like you said - separating the wheat from the tares.  The split into two sections -- people living within a group that is rolling in money and entirely out of control with graft, fast trades and no-bid gov. business, -- that's those who are ignoring the rest of the people in the country by trying to lower wages as much as they can, and who are charging high fees for every  transaction at the banks, and reducing the quality and the package sizes of the stuff they're selling.

We have a large homeless population in my city here in Massachusetts, and we have gangs in the city too.  Stay safe -- I hope and pray for the best in this environment.