The New Yorker defines Creditland:

This thing we're in doesn't yet have a name. It is variously called, in placeholder shorthand, the global financial meltdown, the financial crisis, the credit crisis, the recession, the great recession, the disaster, the panic, or the bust. It long ago matastisized byend th subprime mess, which wasw merely a catalyst-the first wiff, the last straw. A text-friendly acronym, ITE, for "in this economy," has started to get around, in sales pitches and head-count meetings, but it doesn't do the work.

This thing is enormous and pervasive, evolving and ongoing, history-alterhing yet in many respects banal [Emphasis editor55413] .  It is a persistent state, like the weather, or a chronic illness....

Some have compared it to Hurricane Katrina, but Katrina occurred suddenly, and then all was aftermath. In this case, it's as though the levees failed anew every day. We stay on the porch, carrying on with our card game, in water up to our necks....An economic meltdown can camouflage itself in the commonplace. It is more like radiation. It's everywhere, but you can't see or smell it. And then a neighbor loses her job or her hair...

"Banks are going under becase they are undercapitalized. People are going bankrupt. Assets are dropping in value. There is too much debt," [Colin] Negrych said. "Jim Grant"-the financial writer-"had a prase: 'the incessant degradation of the stigma of debt.' Debt is the story."