One Year Later: White collar reset

Amid all the Financial Crisis anniversary coverage, many of us will be trying to recall what we were doing this time last year on the week the world broke. I remember exactly what I was doing. I was talking my wife into booking a vacation to California.

When we'd first come up with the idea, the timing had seemed perfect. She'd never been west of the Mississippi and we hadn't taken a real vacation in three years. Besides, I had to go for work anyway -- to help organize a wine-and-private-jets festival my magazine was hosting the weekend before in Napa Valley, and to supervise our Christmas "Gift Guide" photo shoot featuring such stocking stuffers as a $100,000 motorcycle and a private submarine in the shape of a dolphin."I don't know, maybe we shouldn't go," she said over the phone. "If one or both of us loses our jobs, we'll wish we still had the money."