desperate straits

Even in their current desperate straits, the Big Three automakers are buying $7 billion in parts per month.

If that means suing people and putting them in desperate straits, then that's what has to happen.

At sea, lack of provisions soon brought them to such desperate straits that they drew lots and ate one of their number.

He knew and suspected nothing of the desperate straits in which his friends were placed at that very hour.

But he remembered that men in desperate straits had many a time been known to save the situation by consummate bluff.

The little band, by this time reduced to less than one hundred people, was in desperate straits.

I warrant we shall smile some day at our present desperate straits, and meanwhile "to wait" is the verb we must conjugate.'