Ethics: Ruins of the Second Gilded Age

[David Adolphus]

Anyone else been following this massive cock-up in the NYT? If not, check here (http://www.metafilter.com/83061/Ruins-of-the-Second-Gilded-Age), and here (http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/08/behind-5/), then discuss. It makes for some fascinating reading.

The New York Times commissioned Portuguese photographer Edgar Martins to travel around the United States and take photographs of abandoned construction projects left in the wake of the housing and securities market collapse.

[Daniel Buck]

Man, I bet that would be fun, just going around the world shooting abandoned construction projects!

[Bill Jurasz]

I just finished reading "House of Cards", an excellent book and an excellent two-hour CNBC documentary. I need to read those NYT stuff as well. While I am not surprised that poor, uneducated people made stupid borrowing decisions, I am flabbergasted at what intelligent, well-educated financiers did. :(

I work in the Semiconductor industry in Austin. Back during the dot-com bust I was at Motorola working on PowerPC designs. Intel was building a new complex in downtown Austin. Had land bought, had the shell of the building up. Then the bust and they stopped buildling. They just left that eye-sore for several years until the Feds decided to use that land for a building of their own. But the running joke for some time was this building has "Intel Not Inside". :D

[Mike Ditz]

I just finished reading "House of Cards", an excellent book and an excellent two-hour CNBC documentary. I need to read those NYT stuff as well. While I am not surprised that poor, uneducated people made stupid borrowing decisions, I am flabbergasted at what intelligent, well-educated financiers did. :(


Why would you be flabbergasted by the " intelligent, well-educated financiers" doing what " intelligent, well-educated financiers" do all the time, they make money in good times and bad times and then then get more money from the government. Many of the people were not necessarily "poor, uneducated people making stupid borrowing decisions" a lot of them were middle class people who watched "Mad Money" CNBC all day long and bought into the theory that their homes would never go down in value and THEN they mad stupid borrowing decisions to buy his and hers Escalades , $8,000 granite counter tops and 87 inch flat screen TVs

Other than Bernie Madoff, the financiers are still doing better than most of us.

[Steve Stein]

Greed got people in the hole.

1) Expectations of their house value never goes down
2) Lenders giving out 120% LTV loans to unqualified borrowers
3) People flipping houses every few months with the expectation of living large (and beyond their means)

I lived in SoCal from 1994 to 2002. I bought my home at near bottom after the aerospace industry bolted from SoCal. Its value stagnated for a couple years until 2002 when it went ballistic. I made a very nice profit when I sold it but had I waited another 18 months, I could have tripled my profit. But I checked a few weeks ago and the house I lived in is now selling about $100K less than what I sold it for.

What amazed me was young couples were buying large houses, had a Suburban, BMW, Waverunners, two kids and a huge backyard pool and only one income to pay for all this. They had to be maxxed out on home equity loans and credit cards.

Mike you're right. Most of the top people in finance are still living large. They probably socked their money in something safe.

[Robert Phelan]

While the economy does seem to be on everyone's mind, I'm pretty sure David was referring to the fact that the images have raised so much controversy over the level of post-production/manipulation the freelance shooter did with the photos before handing them in. It's always an interesting line when shooting for news sources. Where is the line between cleaning up photos, taking out a badly-placed lamp-post or background element, and changing the "factual content" of the image? It's an important distinction to consider when selling to magazines and new providers.

[Mike Ditz]

AFAIK making mirror images is a no-no for news, but all editorial is not news so these would be ok to run in the NYT Sunday Magazine, except for the 'disclaimer ' about no digital manipulation. Oops :rolleyes:

[John Thawley]

AFAIK making mirror images is a no-no for news, but all editorial is not news so these would be ok to run in the NYT Sunday Magazine, except for the 'disclaimer ' about no digital manipulation. Oops :rolleyes:

AND the photographers long standing position of NOT manipulating his images. Me thinks if one were to open the photographer's cookie jar, you'd find it was already occupied with HIS fingers.

Not good.

[David Adolphus]

AND the photographers long standing position of NOT manipulating his images. Me thinks if one were to open the photographer's cookie jar, you'd find it was already occupied with HIS fingers.

Not good.

It has been--they are. I'm betting he's going to claim it's a vast artistic statement, but it probably isn't. A commentor mentioned that after getting burned in the past, Natl Geographic now requires RAW files, and they're not alone.