Reading The Pictures: Wall Street Pictures So Stealth, They Haven't Even Drawn A Lipstick Analogy

Finally this morning, the NYT started putting some visuals to the otherwise invisible Wall Street meltdown and ongoing financial market chicanery.

The front page offered up shots of the Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Bank of America CEOs. (They were not publicity shots either. In each case, the rich white guys looked to actually be answering somebody's questions -- or testifying even(!) Then, on page A20, we were shown tourists outside Merrill Lynch (the subject of a stealth weekend fire sale) shooting pictures of their bull sculpture in lower Manhattan. (The " load of bull" association here being almost self-evident.)

(click for full size)
Finally, and most suggestively, p. A21 offered up a series of telephoto shots of unsuspecting U.S. mega-bankers, mostly getting in and out of their shiny luxury cars, once again executing that "putting out the fire step-to" under the cover of Sunday.

...But then, isn't that the beauty of the corporate state, and the accounting and finance game, that everything is so depersonalized and abstracted that the average Joe, or Joe newsperson, either can't understand it or can't access it? (Inset, by the way, is Robert Wolf, chairman for the Americas at UBS arriving Sunday at the Federal Reserve, and Vikram Pandit, chief of Citigroup.)

Forced to actually acknowledge something financial of real national significance happened this weekend, George Bush, our C.E.O. President, tipped his hand this morning when he said the government "was working to minimize" the goings on. I mean, this crisis is so under the political radar, it hasn't even scored its own lipstick analogy.

I'm particularly admiring of the NYT shot, on-line this morning, of the shadow man in the window of the s Square Lehman Brothers building. Besides the telling anonymity, the fact the building skin is grayed out -- which would otherwise be hysterically drawing attention to itself with its digital special effects -- is appropriate to the theme of liquidation.

And then, I also appreciate the creativity of my friend, Mario Tama, who caught this shot outside the Merrill Lynch headquarters. The sense here, with the suit a blur, is the faceless exec simultaneously representing a moving target, and also someone making a run for it.

I applaud theTimes for trying to put a pictorial face and some element of intrigue and surreptitiousness into what is otherwise made to seem like "none of our business" or "never you mind." As I tweeted last night, this whole stealthy, slow-motion mortgage and now banking train wreck -- much of which, we've been told assuredly, in the margins, we'll be paying for -- is not going to go anywhere media-wise and probably won't bisect the presidential campaign (at least, not in any meaningful or enduring way) unless and until there are identifiable public faces attached to this crisis as heros and villains.

For more politics with the sound off, visit BAGnewsNotes.com.  Or Twitter.

(image 1: Mark Lennihan/Associated Press. New York. image 2 & 3: Jin Lee/Bloomberg News via Lehman Files for Bankruptcy; Merrill to Be Sold. NYT.com. image 4: Mario Tama/Getty. New York, 2008)

Comments

[Clavis]

What's the difference between having money left over from your paycheck after paying the bills and NOT having money left over from your paycheck after paying the bills?

Lipstick.

[HoneyBrown]

I was in a convo this morning with a guy in my office who blames CLINTON for this whole financial meltdown. I looked at him like he's crazy and asked "You don't really believe that, do you?" He went on and on about Clinton's fiscal irresponsibility and how he inherited a positive financial model from GHW Bush and left a mess for GW Bush. He said Clinton was able to leave a surplus because of the dot.com boom. lol

I'm so disappointed in his logic and reasoning skills. I didn't even ask who he supported in the election, because I didn't want to hear it. Just get out of my office and go back under your rock.

[dill]

This is the way it has always been. If things are good during a Democratic term, it's because of the policies instated many moons ago by some Repub president. If things are bad it's the fault of the last Democratic president. Republicans take no responsibility for any of their decisions unless it somehow happens to work (which is rare), then blame the Democrats. The media then promotes the Repub talking points and the idiots who don't read or could care less about current events believe what they hear in passing. What a country!

[moreupnorth]

Ok I'll bite. You can put lipstick on a financial meltdown, but it is still a result of bad governance!

[RumiSouth]

"this whole stealthy, slow-motion mortgage and now banking train wreck...is not going to go anywhere media-wise and probably won't bisect the presidential campaign...unless and until there are identifiable public faces attached to this crisis as heroes and villains."

Damn skippy. We need a "man in the dock" to wrap our heads around these things. Villains like invisible hands and deregulation are too abstract to make sense to us.

[Danny]

Phil Gramm, Economic Adviser to the McCain campaugn -- sponsored a U.S. Senate bill, in 1999, that led to the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act which had protected commercial banks from investment banks after the 1929 depression. They, McCain's crowd, waited that many years to let it happen, in hopes, I guess, that Democrats would either pay the price (no more corporate funds) or WIN at the polls.

[Benthead]

Yes, make this a narrative and give it faces, names, and images.

One of the names: Keating deregulation. Another: McCain.

[kellygrrrl]

did McCain's talkinghead Nancy Pf-whatever just say

McCain wants Bigger Government?

I thought they were the less government party?

Palin just said last week "You need govt to do a few little things."

[kathy001]

Yeah, that's what the Republicans like to say, that they are the ones that want smaller government and the Democrats are the ones that want bigger government. But you have to wonder just how small the Republicans really want to make the government when they want government to regulate how Americans have sex, who Americans love and what a woman can and can not do with her body.

[ToonMoene]

> I'm particularly admiring of the NYT shot, on-line this morning, of the shadow man
> in the window of the Square Lehman Brothers building.

Ah, but the symbolism is much more than just that - the projected map is that of Europe and North Africa. The man is talking from the Sahara:

Isaiah 40:

1. [3] The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.