Imagine a pencil rolling slowly across a table to the edge — you can see it; you know it’s going to roll off. You can grab it and save yourself the trouble of bending over and picking it up, or you can just let it continue rolling until suddenly, it’s gone, over the edge. It’s like the answer given by a character from the Hemingway novel The Sun Also Rises. When asked, “How did you go bankrupt?” the character answers, “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”