I may have mentioned this to you, but when I was in South Bend this past summer I was shocked by the number of boarded up houses I saw once I ventured a little bit away from campus. In some neighborhoods, over a third of the houses were vacant (presumably due to foreclosure). Here in Boston many of my friends have been laid off, but luckily most are okay due to severance packages and spouses with high-paying jobs. However, seeing all of those boarded up houses woke me up what the recession has been like for people without anything to fall back on when they lose their jobs. It was the first time I really realized the magnitude of the recession.