Ian Yolles, an entrepreneur living in Oregon, has felt the whiplash from Wall Street's hyper-volatile credit markets at first hand.
A self-described news junkie, the former Nike marketing executive used to have what he calls a "conceptual and intellectual" interest in keeping up with the economy and the financial markets. "Then suddenly, all this stuff I'd been reading about was frighteningly real."
The outdoor clothing company Mr Yolles had helped found was the epitome of progressive Pacific Northwest cool. Called Nau, it combined rugged outdoor practicality, the pursuit of high style and a devotion to sustainability that extended to making all its clothes out of recycled plastic bottles.
It took Wall Street's financing boom to float this West Coast dream - and just as swiftly to wreck it. Half of the $35m (*24m, £19m) behind what Mr Yolles admits was a highly ambitious venture came from a private equity firm and a hedge fund. When the financiers had to draw in their horns this year, bankruptcy came swiftly.
In hindsight, the credit market dislocation that helped to lay Mr Yolles's company low was just a warning tremor ahead of the far larger earthquake that has struck this month. The resulting institutional meltdown on Wall Street has sewn confusion and anxiety on the other side of the continent. It has also provoked deep distrust of the financial system that has supported America's long prosperity.
"I think it's incredibly frightening: it seems that the financial system has become so arcane and so complex that no one understands it," says Mr Yolles. The collapse on Thursday of Washington Mutual, the giant thrift association that has a big presence in the city, has brought the reality of financial dislocation home.
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