Born in 2008

If you were born in 2008, you arrived in the year the economy fell out from under the American dream in a way that felt sudden and was not. Lehman Brothers collapsed in September in the largest bankruptcy in American history. The stock market lost half its value.

The housing market cratered. Millions of Americans found themselves underwater on their mortgages, their retirement accounts gutted, their jobs disappearing. The bailout of the banks—$700 billion, TARP—was passed over enormous public objection.

The word "recession" gave way to the phrase "the Great Recession" and then comparisons to 1929 that had seemed unthinkable a year before. Into this: Barack Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States and the first African American president in the nation's history. The election night scenes in Grant Park in Chicago, the crowd weeping, Jesse Jackson's face—it was a moment of genuine historical weight that transcended the economic crisis for one long November evening.

*The Dark Knight* was the summer film, Heath Ledger's Joker lodging in the cultural memory. *Slumdog Millionaire* won the Oscars. Tina Fey's Sarah Palin impression on SNL was the cultural event of the fall.

Gas had hit $4 a gallon before crashing as demand collapsed. The country was changed by 2008 in ways it would spend years understanding.