Word: dickensian
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This kind of activity - flushing out low-rent tenants and replacing them with wealthier new renters - has been a staple of strong real estate markets for years. What was different over the past few years was how widespread this Dickensian business model had become, largely fueled by Wall Street money seeking high rates of return. Another difference was how much the general investing public - through university endowments and pension funds - became party to such morally dubious schemes. Consider it another footnote to the Gilded Age we just passed through. (See pictures of Americans in their homes...
Fueled by writers, the debate has plenty of rhetorical flourishes. One incensed objector called Google a "Dickensian street pickpocket." The Open Book Alliance, a coalition that includes goliath rival Microsoft as well as the National Writers Union, likened Google to industrialist John D. Rockefeller and compared the settlement to a monopoly cartel controlling the future of digital publishing. "They have worked very hard to create the impression that this is like a freight train, and if you want to stand in front of it, you'll get run over," Gary Reback, an antitrust attorney who penned the legal brief...
...sake of the derby or Bliss's budding romance with a hipster boy from a band, Oliver (played by musician Landon Pigg). "It's a great name," Bliss sighs, her usual reserve shattered by Oliver's protruding hip bones and fervent attentions. "Yeah, if you like wayfaring Dickensian orphans," Pash says wryly. Her cynicism sets the tone for how we feel about the romance, and Barrymore's sweetly cheesy direction of two love scenes between Oliver and Bliss, one set in what looks like a wheat field and the other in a swimming pool, does not dissuade us from this...
...Colonial America--where moneylending was governed as much by moral codes as by legal ones--defaulting on your debts was considered a moral failing. Accordingly, owing as little as 40 shillings (less than the price of a fine pair of bedsheets) could get you thrown into a Dickensian debtors' prison. Amid the financial turmoil that followed the Revolutionary War, however, delegates to the Constitutional Convention predicted the nation might need laws that would facilitate going belly-up in an orderly fashion. The first federal bankruptcy law, which drew on English statutes, was signed in 1800 and redounded to the benefit...
That sentiment seems to be taking hold in many parts of Latin America, where thousands of children are growing up behind bars alongside their incarcerated mothers and fathers. That might sound like Dickensian tragedy; but in Bolivia it's a legal - and fiercely defended - practice. "We've seen that this is best for mother, or father, and child," says Jorge Lopez, Director of Bolivia's Penitentiary System. "It's important not to rip those bonds between parent and child." What's more, sadly, it may be the best alternative for the children themselves. In Bolivia, South America's poorest country...