Huzzah!

"What happened after we went bankrupt?"
"Not much, actually. It was a little anti-climactic. There were people who stopped getting social security checks and things like that, but they just ended up moving in with their families. A lot of the people without families died pretty quickly, but then again a lot of landlords took pity oh their indigent tenants. With so many people moving back home, it's not like they had anyone to rent to anyway."
"That doesn't really sound too bad."
"Looking back, I guess not, but it was sad. It hit everyone pretty hard."
"Ebeneezer Scrooge would have been okay with it."
"Hah! He. Heh. He certainly would have."
"Good one, eh dad?"
"Very good, but I think it would have wormed its way into him too."
"Sorry."
"Don't be. That was really funny. Sometimes the best jokes are about the worst things. That's how people deal with something they can't process. We probably would have been better off if more people had been able to tell a few jokes, but all those old and sick people dying in the streets really got to everyone. We just stopped caring. The election came and everyone was yelling at each other on the television, but no one could stand to watch it. Barely anyone voted. No one got elected."
"Then how'd you get to be mayor?"
"Your mother and I eventually got something a little extra to care about. Everything changed, but it looked the same. Other people like us, people with babies on the way, decided we could build a community we could be proud to raise our children in."
"So you rose up!"
"I wouldn't quite put it like that. We convinced enough people to have our own election. It was much easier to get people to care about what was happening immediately around them."
"You were a reformer!"
"Where do you learn all this stuff? I wish. I certainly tried, but there were plenty of others who liked their constant wallowing. They stood up for their right to wallow, and when I refused to let them, they walked out."
"And now Manhattan is all ours!"