PREPRODUCTION
"I think everyone knows that something just isn't right."
-- Dave Ramsey
The Country Music Hall of Fame sits on the edge of downtown Nashville, across Broadway Street from a row of run-down buildings, one of which houses a FedEx Kinko's store. Downtown is, like most midsize American cities, oddly quiet. The busiest spot is a Starbucks tucked into the mezzanine of a mid-rise office building occupied by a bank. At night, retired couples and newlyweds wander past the Hall of Fame and the FedEx Kinko's on their way to a little strip of bars and restaurants, like the Hard Rock Cafe and Sbarro, the pizza place popular with tourists. The only clue that this is Nashville, and not Louisville or Minneapolis, is a young man in a wife beater and a cowboy hat strumming a guitar on top of a box. He tells the few good folks who pause to listen that he's looking for a record deal, and they seem to appreciate the lonely note of authenticity he's lending their vacation, but it's hard to figure how he's going to end up across the street someday, in th ... read full excerpt from: Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit and the Era of Predatory Lenders ebook
