A decade after the financial crisis, many Americans are still struggling to recover [View all]

[Demovictory9]

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-financial-crisis-middle-class-20180909-htmlstory.html

Edmund F. Biro still remembers how good his life was before the financial crisis that nearly destroyed the economy 10 years ago.

The software engineer was earning about $85,000 a year doing consulting work. He, his fiancee and her teenage son lived in a three-bedroom Chatsworth condo that had jumped to about $500,000 in value. And, just in case of emergencies, his bank had set him up with a home equity line of credit.

“As far as I was concerned, things were going really well,” he said, “except I wasn’t aware of all the things that could go wrong.”


There were a lot of them.

The housing market crashed. The economy fell into recession. Then the collapse of Wall Street investment bank Lehman Bros. on Sept. 15, 2008 — 10 years ago this week — plunged the nation into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Like many average Americans, Biro, now 61, is still struggling to get his life back in order.

He earns less than half what he did in 2007 after much of his work dried up. His fiancee and her son left, he said, when he could no longer afford to pay her college tuition and car expenses. And although he still has his condo, its value has dropped and he owes about $100,000 on the credit line.

“I’m very aware that I’m that close to being out on the street like those other poor unfortunates, and they’re everywhere,” he said.