The Top 10 Everything of 2008

10. Murder and the Financial Crisis

The case may not have had anything to do with the global meltdown but the news of the unemployed financial analyst who killed his family and then himself made headlines just weeks after Lehman went bankrupt, the bailouts started and the markets took a dive, just as everyone began to worry about their jobs, their 401ks and their homes. Karthik Rajaram had been living the American dream: an immigrant who had made good, who had made huge amounts of money at work and by playing the real estate market. What then led him to shoot his wife, his mother-in-law, his two young sons and finally himself? Mental illness may have been at the core but the timing of the crime made it painfully symbolic.

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