Released: October 05, 2008

A fiscal lesson for the ages

Source: N.C. Aizenman, Washington Post (Free Registration)

On a recent evening, about a dozen elegantly dressed ladies filed to the front of the auditorium at Bethany Presbyterian Church in Gaithersburg to sing a hymn.

Steve Choi, a 46-year-old Korean American businessman with sparkling brown eyes, watched with a mixture of admiration and concern. The one with the ponytail, Choi knew, had been struggling to keep her restaurant afloat. The one in beige recently closed her dry-cleaning store. And the one with the frilly white blouse would need to work extra hard at her water-supply business now that her husband had been forced to give up his job as a Lexus salesman.

Choi had a pretty good idea what his friends were feeling. He is a man who has lost everything he owned. Twice.

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