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Ook dit verhaal hoort u niet van Heleen Mees, columniste van de NRC:

Crisis Plunges US Middle Class into Poverty By Gregor Peter Schmitz and Gabor Steingart The financial crisis in the US has triggered a social crisis of historic dimensions. Soup kitchens are suddenly in great demand and tent cities are popping up in the shadow of glistening office towers. Even drug dealers are feeling the pinch. Business is poor in the New York banking district around Wall Street these days, even for drug dealers. In the good old days, they used to supply America's moneyed elite with cocaine and crack. But now, with the good times gone, they spend their days in the Bowery Mission, a homeless shelter with a dining hall and a chapel. Alvin, 47, is one of them. His customers are gone, as is the money he earned during better times. And when another dealer higher up the food chain decided he was entitled to a bigger cut of the profits, things became too dicey for Alvin. "I'm afraid," he says.

Alvin, who is originally from Louisiana, cleared out his apartment and
moved into the oldest homeless shelter in New York City. In the drug
business, a dealer who doesn't pay his bills stands to get the maximum
penalty: death. But Alvin feels safe in the Bowery Mission, even though the
demand for beds is so high. "Last night I slept on the floor in front of
the pulpit," he says.

Like human detritus, society's disappointed and castoffs sit around in the
mission every evening, waiting to be assigned their sleeping quarters -- a
bed, a floor mat or an unpadded church pew -- by the shelter director.

Ironically, the mission's donations have fallen by 13 percent from last
year, says outreach director, James Macklin. Macklin was once homeless
himself and lived at the mission before he rose through the ranks to his
current management position. "We will emerge stronger from this crisis," he
says defiantly.

In the United States, the economic downturn has developed into a social
crisis of a dimension the country has not experienced since the Great
Depression early in the 20th century. In addition to bringing down stock
prices and corporate earnings, the current crisis has deprived millions of
people of their livelihood.

Poverty as a mass phenomenon is back. About 50 million Americans have no
health insurance, and more people are added to their ranks every day. More
than 32 million people receive food stamps, and 13 million are unemployed.
The homeless population is growing in tandem with a rapid rise in the rate
of foreclosures, which were 45 percent higher in March 2009 than they were
in the same month of the previous year.
Lees verder: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,620754,00.html