Let your life be free from love of money
but be content with what you have,
for he has said, I will never forsake you or abandon you.
Thus we may say with confidence:
The Lord is my helper,
and I will not be afraid.
What can anyone do to me?
Heb 13:6-7

“For a long time, it was kind of glamorous and I had friends who’d ask me ‘Can you get me a job there?’ ” says Ms. Chau, 35, who was part of a recent round of layoffs at the firm’s [J.P. Morgan] Manhattan headquarters. A few weeks ago, she mentioned her work to a photographer she’d met through a friend. “And he looks at me and says, ‘Oh, you’re one of them.’ ”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/business/03bankers.html?ref=todayspaper

Dazzling personal consumption is out. Middle-class drabness is in. It’s sad, but there’s nothing to be done.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/opinion/03brooks.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=david%20brooks&st=cse

Seems as though you lost sight
Of what's important when depositin'
Them checks into your bank account
And you up out of poverty
Your values is a disarray prioritizin' horribly
Unhappy with the riches 'cause you're piss-poor morally
Ignorin' all prior advice and forewarnin'
And we mighty full of ourselves
All of a sudden, aren't we?
T.I. "Live Your Life"

Tupac somehow entered the conversation at dinner, and I immediately thought about his song, "Changes":

We gotta make a change...
It's time for us as a people to start makin' some changes.
Let's change the way we eat, let's change the way we live
and let's change the way we treat each other.
You see the old way wasn't working so it's on us to do
what we gotta do, to survive.

And still I see no changes can't a brother get a little peace
It's war on the streets & the war in the Middle East
Instead of war on poverty they got a war on drugs
so the police can bother me.