The foreclosure crisis has led to the Museum of American Finance face an awkward situation
August 28th, 2009
Contrary to expectations – the free markets has recently failed as is evident from the foreclosure triggered crisis. This has led to the Museum of American Finance to face a delicate situation. Its very corporate sponsors had failed. But rather than fretting and side stepping the museum jumped in with enterprising zeal to make the best of the situation.
The museum mounted an exhibition dubbed “Tracking the Credit Crisis”. According to the president of the museum Lee Kjelleren it highlights the “greed, recklessness and arrogance” of the players of the game in Wall Street. This was not perhaps what Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and American International Group had thought off in the remotest corner of their minds when they donated funds to the museum.
But the innovating idea of the museum authorities is paying off dividends and since the financial crisis the footfalls in the museum has increased by leaps and bounds. The museum is located in Wall Street itself – at the heart of the financial crisis. The number of visitors has increased to 200 per day – it being double that of the previous summer numbers. It may be noted that the Metropolitan Museum of Art has on an average so many visitors every 90 seconds.
The visitors are transfixed by a morbid curiosity to see the depiction of the wreck of the financial train. Lizzy McNeely is a teacher of Toronto. She said, “This is about the market crashing. I am interested in how they are going to represent that.”
By paying an admission fee of $8 one can get a detailed peep into the string of events that brought the international economy on its knees. The favourite sections are those that describe the toxic assets and how these were sold all across the globe by America – “as if the rest of the world didn’t already love America enough. Also is a big draw the depiction of the questioning role of the rating agencies in hiding the risks of the sub-prime mortgage loans and the securities that were subsequently based on their values.
There is also a still photograph of Richard S. Fuld Jr. the much rankled chief of Lehman Brothers being surrounded by a belligerent crowd. One person in crowd is holding aloft a banner with the word “crook” sprawled across it.
Kjelleren explained that through the exhibition he wanted to show how “dumb” the banks had been in getting involved in investment tools like credit-default swaps. He said, “It was dumb, it was more than dumb, and it was occasionally reckless and irresponsible.”
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