squirm, fungible, hard luck, picket fence, be carved/set in stone

What would you pay, sight unseen, for a house that nobody wants, on a hard-luck street where no houses are selling?

That question is easy compared to the one confronting the Treasury Department as Washington works toward a $700 billion bailout of financial institutions, The New York Times writes.
Well, we can think of several objections. First, there is the question of whether the U.S. government should be picking winners and losers in a business such as this. It's one thing to bail out the financial sector, whose product -- credit -- is essentially fungible and on which all other businesses depend. Automobiles, however, are not interchangeable, and Congress can't substitute its specific technological and aesthetic preferences for those of the market. What if we lend Detroit $25 billion and still nobody buys its cars?

Black Turnout Could Decide House Races

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. -- Daniel Miller weaved through the pews at Lewis Chapel Missionary Baptist Church, past the ladies in their Sunday hats and boys squirming in their suits, and headed for the only white face in the crowd.
(By Lyndsey Layton, The Washington Post)


Two days later, my son William and I paddled our canoe through our old neighborhood. We paddled through what used to be City Park and is now a lake. We paddled over the four-foot picket fence I had built in our old front yard, over bushes and mailboxes. Strange to say, the neighborhood was beautiful, half submerged.

The Washington Post leads with, and everyone fronts, Sen. Barack Obama suggesting that his plan for withdrawal from Iraq isn't set in stone and he reserves the right to "continue to refine" his policies after meeting with commanders on the ground. T

be carved/set in stone

if an arrangement, a plan, or a rule is set in stone, it is completely fixed so that it cannot be changed

The rules aren't set in stone; they can be altered to suit changing circumstances. [usually negative]

These are just a few ideas to be discussed - nothing is carved in stone.

picket fence noun [C]
a low fence made of a row of flat sticks which are pointed at the top and often painted white
Wikipedia article "Picket fence".

pick・et

  

━━ n., v. 柵; 杭（をめぐらす，につなぐ）; 【軍】小哨（を配置する）, 哨兵（勤務をする）; （労働争議の）監視員（を務める）, ピケ（を張る）; 抗議デモ隊.
 picket fence　杭で造った垣.
 pick・et・ing　【労働】ピケ.
 picket line　【軍】小哨線; ピケ（ライン）.

squirm Show phonetics
verb [I]
to move from side to side in an awkward way because of nervousness, embarrassment or pain:
Nobody spoke for at least five minutes and Rachel squirmed in her chair with embarrassment.
The fish squirmed on the ground for a few moments and then lay still.

squirm Show phonetics
noun [C]

fungible

━━ n. 代替可能物品 ((取引上，同種・同量・同品質の物品で代えうる)).

adj.

1. Law. Returnable or negotiable in kind or by substitution, as a quantity of grain for an equal amount of the same kind of grain.
2. Interchangeable.

n.
Something that is exchangeable or substitutable. Often used in the plural.

[Medieval Latin fungibilis, from Latin fungī (vice), to perform (in place of).]

fungibility fun'gi·bil'i·ty n.

hard luck

Misfortune, adversity, as in He's had a lot of hard luck in his day. This expression is also used in the phrase hard-luck story, a tale of one's misfortune that is related in order to get sympathy (or a donation). For example, We can't ignore her hard-luck story, even if you doubt that it's true. [Second half of 1500s] Also see tough break.