A picture of an armed sheriff moving through an American home after an eviction due to a mortgage foreclosure won the top prize in the World Press Photo competition.
Jury members said the strength of the photo by Anthony Suau for Time magazine was in its opposites – it looks like a classic war photograph, but is simply the eviction of people from a house.
And one more person benefits from the bad economy. Damn photographers.
‘You! Family of 4! Out on the street! Go stand by that pimp and drug dealer.’
‘Goddamn families coming to my neighborhood trying to live responsibly thinking the market won’t tank.’
PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW
This won best press photo?! More low standards.
The subtext is important, but yeah, the photo just isn’t that great.
@...iamevilhomer:
dude.
youre so annoying. like the athiests who rub it in others peoples faces just cause. THAT kind of annoying.
just go ahead and keep thinking like you do. that will help everything.
excellent pic for a sign of the times. Crazy shit.
and yea the pic isnt all that.
Without the explanation the pic would be pretty meainingless. If a picture is worth a thousand words it shouldn’t need any to explain itself – FAIL
The people living in that house didn’t give a fuck, the place is trashed. If I was that cop I would have back to the car and grabbed a 12 or an M4 if my agency let me carry one, who knows what your gonna find.
If people think that a B&W photo of your house looks like a classic war photo you need more than a vacuum cleaner and some paper towels, a post natal abortion would help solve the issue however.
Just about every home I’ve been in that people have lost to foreclosure, they take great pains to mess the place up, leave shit laying around, and generally fuck the place up so it needs professional cleaning to resell the property.
Also agree, low standards for best press photo for the year. I’ve seen better in our local paper.
@thatonejimguy:lmao
Man that looks more like a busted up gang hideout than a post eviction room clearing… LOL
@...thatonejimguy:
Laughed so hard, coffee came out my nose.
….AAAAAHHHHHHH!!!….MOTHER FUCKER!!!….IT BURNS!!!….I GONNA KICKER YER ASS!!!
to all the naysayers, how many World Press Photo competitions have you won? 😛
Every single one ive entered
@...Nimbo: Did it occur to you that possibly the police officers trashed that house?
I’m not saying they did, but it’s possible.
Aside, If (pejorative) you think it’s 100% everyone’s fault for taking out a loan they couldn’t afford, then congratulations, you’re one of the rare people who has NEVER been scammed on ANYTHING. You’re the exception, not the norm, and preying on those with little education in such matters hardly makes someone a ‘good’ business person, just a dick.
when people get foreclosed its common for them to thourghly trash the house as a fuck you to the bank. technically until the exact date they are evicted it is their house and they can trash it if they want to. Very very common to see anything of value stripped (door frames, crown molding, carpet, hardwood floors, windows, doors, columns, etc…)
sooo.. people got evicted for living outside their means? Don’t “buy” houses you can’t afford and don’t get loans on your loans. If you feel pity for evicted people, it’s because you don’t understand how mortgages work.
Someone make a Mortgage Photoshop that says “I heard you like loans, so I took a loan out on your loan and now you’re living on the street!”
That cop is holding that gun like a little boy playing secret agents or something. If he tries to shoot it, it would spring back and smack him in the face.
@... CathyLong
I hope you were trying to be funny. You don’t have to understand a mortgage if you lose your job.
@CathyLong
Wow thats pretty fucking stupid and cruel. you do realize that millions of people have lost their jobs since october. Cathy you sound like a really shrill stuck up bitch who does not have any humanity left and probably never had a soul.
@...Teutonic Logic:
i206.photobucket.com/albums/bb8/djrhymez/633562373051470842-stfuhuman.jpg
@monkeyboy
just because a female rarely graces us with her presense here on mcs doesnt mean they are somehow off limits.
Lol… “sweetie”. A mortgage is a loan for people who have not saved enough to pay for their house/apartment/condo in full. That’s it. It’s not some magical supply of money. And the job market is hardly as empty as CNN might have you believe. I lost my job too. But I didn’t cry about it or skimp out on my bills. I just got another job. Sure, shit was tight for about a month while I was interviewing, but I didn’t kill myself or get evicted. Go research the truth behind these people who get evicted and you’ll see the majority of them aren’t the “victims” they’ve been played up as. Many of them are simply irresponisble, made bad housing investments or were too lazy/self-pitying to get another job. That’s not “cruel”. It’s just true. I don’t think people deserve pity just because they made a mistake in life.
@...Teutonic Logic: rarely? off limits? i laughed out loud
@CathyLong
do you work for FannieMae or FreddieMac? I havent talked to anyone with such an absolute rigid view of the collapse.
And your right people dont deserve pity because they made a mistake in life, they deserve pity because they are fellow Human beings. Like I said it sounds like you dont have a shred of humanity
Define “humanity”.
@... cathylong
Who the fuck pays for their house in full? That is fucking funny. Umm yea I would like one house, here is $150,000 in cash. I have a feeling you are writing this to stir up people because no one on earth can be as fucking stupid as you are making yourself out to be. When you want to tell everyone how to keep fruit from going bad in the fridge let us know.
*whoosh* useless internet fight. Bye! 🙂
lol.. I never said people do that. I was just making a point that many people seem to forget that a mortgage is a loan. It’s money that you OWE. Can you imagine if I took out a bank loan on my Student Loans and said “well it’s an investment, surely I can pay back that 150k!” You shouldn’t be allowed to use your unpaid house as collateral because it’s NOT YOURS yet. That’s the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard of.
I’m saying that it is a risk when you take out a mortgage. I rent right now for a reason, because I cannot confidently go out and buy a house on my current salary. If I did, I sure as hell wouldn’t go blaming my realtor or my bank if I couldn’t pay for the giant loan I took out. Then again, I wouldn’t be buying a 150k house in the first place but that’s another point.
The reason a cop is in the image is because he HAS to be there. It’s actually a requirement in most cases of eviction for an armed officer to be there to escort the people out and landlords are NOT allowed to do it themselves. Read the rules in your state on eviction and get back to me but I know the NY Renter Laws require armed personnel. I think this whole scenario is just being overdramtized by the media.
Yes, it sucks that some people lost their jobs and were too undertrained or underqualified to work anywhere else. I highly DOUBT that, but it sucks for their families nonetheless. Point is though, they got themselves into the mess by buying outside their means in the first place.
Personally, I am aware that loans are just loans and the people who gave you that money owe you NOTHING because you have essentially stolen from them if you do not repay it. Yes, I have student loans out, but I do not pretend they are anything more than bills I must repay.
I’d just like to know why it’s the bank’s fault that you were fired? What about the bank employees who were fired because hundreds of people like that didn’t pay their loans?
The reason people starting being late on their mortgage payments is because the interest rate varies. For years people took advantage of a low interest rate because everyone said it wasn’t going to go up… and it did. So a family that was use to paying $1500 now has to pay $1700, that extra $200 is taken away from something else. They are not going to starve but they will pay less on their credit cards. Also, the government wanted more people to buy houses so they lowered their standards. People thought they could afford it because the mortgage companies said they could. It’s been one long repetitive line of people being fucked over because there are always people out there to fuck over hard working people.
too much credit cards, why spend money that you don’t have…
CathyLong is right. And you know it. If you can be objective enough just for a moment you would see that the things she said are just cold hard facts.
Obviously there are exceptions. There are exceptions to everything.
But the majority of people know what they’re getting themselves into yet they do it anyway.
If you make sign up for a mortgage with higher payments than you take home in a month, thats your own fault.
People were able to buy property who had no business buying property.
And the people trashed the house. If they destroyed the house, why would they not fight with a cop, who they see as the oppressor, and at fault for them now being without their home?
yeah cathy is a real genuis, we should follow her ideas to the logical conclusion. No one should get a loan of anykind for anything. That would be great for the world economy.
one thing to keep in mind is that unless your like 90 years old you havent seen anything this bad. So how can the people that got loans 5 years ago have known what they were getting themselves into? How do you anticipate the worst finicial crisis in nearly 80 years? This whole economic depression will continue until confidence is restored. If everyone is overly conservative and anticipating the next downturn, the economy will NEVER recover to the levels it was before. We are already looking probably looking at a visible decline in standard of living for the medium term. So the ideas advanced by the likes of Cathy are distrous.
@... dieAntagonista
CathyLong has made two differnt points. One being that there should be no loans – which is just crazy. Tell me how many people have the money to buy houses in full.
Second, it’s not the bank’s fault that you lost your job. It is the bank’s fault for using deceptive marketing tactics to close mortages. Oh yea this rate will stay for years to come don’t worry sign. We don’t know what we are talking about because loan originators are a small step up from used car sales.
The people didn’t know what they were signing but they TRUSTED the originators to be intelligent and know what they were doing. But they weren’t. They were nothing more then sales people and it’s great to see them lose their jobs.
So what “cold hard facts” are you referring to, because I haven’t seen any from eith of you.
@...dieAntagonista: Right, people shouldn’t get into loans they can’t afford to pay back. Definitely true.
But banks shouldn’t loan to people that can’t afford the loans, it does them no good either. This was done because both people and the loan officers lied here and there to have good mortgages to split up and sell on the new markets. (Thanks Greenspan.) As much as they were lying to people, a la @...Drew, they were also deluding themselves and creating information asymmetry, anathema to markets.
Is it the people’s fault for taking out loans they couldn’t afford? Yes, in many cases. A criminal is also at fault for taking something that’s not theirs. However, does that make it OK to leave your front door open all night with a big pile of cash right in front of it? Is not some of the blame yours?
@...dhg4983: Leave the economics to people with two brain cells to rub together. One of the main reasons the economy is bad is because people took out loans they couldn’t afford. You’ve got cause and effect entirely backwards. Really, anyone who’s lost their job should be blaming the people who bailed on their loans, not the other way around.
@The Matrix: Rebooted
You are a fucking idiot. They didn’t take out loans they couldn’t afford they took out loans they could afford and the interest jumped on them when the mortgage companies started doing bad. Sure get a variable interest rate, it won’t jump.
@...ieattime20: i hope you remember the main reasons is the bank don’t care much about you the bank is there to make profit they won’t care about your financial status
It wasn’t just banks, it was mortgage companies that were handing out first-time home buyer loans at ridiculously low rates, that stayed that way as long as the prime interest didn’t move around too much. Then there were the realtors that told these people over and over again that you can buy a house and pay less than their current rent. Don’t forget the lawyers that wrote up all the legal paperwork that assured the people that everything would be just fine. The people that were targeted were not previous home owners, didn’t come from families that had ever owned a house and basically had no clue what they were taking on and how their mortgage would be affected by changes in the various markets. I knew better and got a 30 year fixed loan at a slightly higher rate and I pay every 2 weeks so I’d be done in 22 years instead of 30. That now leaves me 12 years of paying a mortgage. I’ve never taken a loan out on the house (refinance, equity etc…), but I had planned on it to redo the roof and asphalt the driveway. I don’t think that’s gonna happen anytime soon now.
The banks and mortgage companies were essentially allowed to do whatever they wanted w/ their home loans, so they bundled them and sold the to investment firms (previously illegal), who sold them again and again and again. In ten years I’ve had my mortgage changed 4 times. It was originally through my local bank, now I have no idea who Midland Mortgage is.
I think everyone agrees that one should become educated about any major financial commitment, but at some point we have to trust that the professionals are telling us the truth. Have you read all the stuff you have to sign to get a mortgage? It’s mostly legalese and not comprehensible to most non-lawyers. I’d say it took 2 months, once we picked the house and the loan was approved, to finish all the needed paperwork. It’s a bit ridiculous.
@...ColombianMonkey: The bank can’t make profit on your loan if you don’t pay it back. This is why it is in the best interest of the bank to gather information about your credit history and correctly use it to determine how big your loan could be and your interest rate.
Contrary to what most people think, foreclosing a loan is BAD for banks. They will seek to avoid it if necessary.
However, like many businesses, the interest of banks are not well represented by the interests of the people making loans. Just like CEOs frequently act against the best interest of shareholders.
@...Drew: Let me use small words so you understand. People took out adjusted rate mortgages. They knew (or should have known) that the rates could go up. When those rate did go up, the people could no longer afford the mortgage. Therefore they TOOK OUT LOANS THEY COULDN’T AFFORD. QED.
that is true
@...reboot: They were told over, and over, and over again, by people who they were supposed to trust as professionals, or in any case undoubtedly had more information than them, that the rates would not go up.
This is called information asymmetry, and without regulation it ruins so-called free markets.
Your presumptions on what people should have known or how they should have acted are not in line with real observations of consumers acting in a market, and/or you do not fully understand all that happened on the bank/mortgage side of things. Not looking into those things, i.e. not having that information, can indeed paint a rather 3D picture.
@...ieattime20: er, 2D. I shouldn’t expect good typing skills while on medication.
Wow… Did not expect this thread to run on like this… 🙂 To be honest, this all seems like a pointless argument. The last few years has placed the economy in the worst shape it has been in a long time. Though I think a lot of the bad loans have partially the Bank and mortgage companies fault. They were the financial experts, but were still giving out bad loans like candy, knowing full well they were bad loans. But it is also true that they weren’t all to blame.
Nobody can buy a house these days without a loan. But that said some handled it better than others. Some people took out loans they really could not have afforded. Some took out loans the could have afforded of the economy hadn’t tanked. Many lost jobs and through no fault of their own, have not been able to find new ones. Everyones situations are different. But the one common thing is that the economy affected everyone pretty badly.
I don’t think we can’t really make *any* blanket statements beyond that, about why so many people have ended ended up defaulting on loans and getting evicted…
DEBT – DO NOT WANT!
@The Matrix: Rebooted
the intial forclosures are because of bad loans thats correct. But the banking system allowed the whole thing to spread all over the world and effect every sector of the economy. So people who would have been fine if they could have kept their job, now are fucked. The intial bubble is claiming people who were not over leveraged. The reasons banks are to blame is because they pioneered a system that was meant to spread risk around but instead just spread the crisis around the whole world (mortage backed securities).
And while I fully acknowledge there were a lot of people taking loans they shouldnt, but why the fuck were banks lending to anyone with a pulse. Would you indiviudally lend money like that? The mortages were a twoway street and the banks were blinded by greed as much as potential homeowners were.
@...Drew:
I don’t think that’s what she meant. You’re just interpreting her words any way you want.
What she meant, or as I understood it anyway – a loan is a loan. Which means the house or whatever it is you got, is not yours yet and you need to be aware of that.
This Information and the consequences – it’s all available if you care enough to study up before you make such a life altering decision.
@...ieattime20:
But yeah on the other hand, like ieattime20 said, banks are deceiving as well. But I think it’s safe to say that in most cases it’s just naive young adults who want to be deceived. “It will work itself out somehow.” – If I got a cat every time I heard friends of mine say that, I’d be one crazy lady.
So now everyone I know is in debt, and hardly any of them was tricked into anything.
It wasn’t just mortgages either. It was equity lines, credit card lines that were completely out of whack. Why does anyone need 10 Visa cards? I have 3 cards. A Visa w/ a limit equal to a single paycheck, an AMEX charge card (no limit, PIF every month) and my debit card. I have friends w/ more cards than spots in wallets to put them. Somehow way too much of this country’s middle class started spending beyond their means to pay off. Of all the people I know (excluding family), I’m the only one who actually bought a car, rather than lease. I bought my last one in 1996 (’95 Ranger), paid it off and have been driving it ever since. Growing up, I don’t remember there being so much stuff to buy. So much stuff has become a monthly bill (credit cards, cable, internet, cell phone). I look around my house sometimes and think “When did I buy all this stuff?” and “Why did I buy all this stuff?”. It’s crazy. I hope the market can find its equilibrium soon and keep it for a while.
@...dieAntagonista: It’s splitting hairs to say this, I know, but it’s hard to say that safely.
On one hand, people do lie about their incomes to get better loans. On the other hand, people have done that since like forever and it rarely spearheads a total economic collapse. We DO know other factors were involved. So, even if it’s in ‘most cases’, the other cases have happened far more frequently than in the past.
Anyway, yeah.
If you can’t pay your mortgage, you gotta go. Doesn’t matter if you took out a loan you couldn’t handle, the bank gave you a loan it shouldn’t have, or you lost a job due to your own incompetence or the piss-poor economy. The way it works is, you can’t pay, you gotta go.
@...rattybad: If it were just a few people, you’d be correct, but people are failing because the economy is failing because the banks are failing because the stock market has gone insane because the housing bubble burst because values were hyper inflated, etc…you get my point. We can’t let all the people foreclose on their houses if we want to save the banks, Wall Street and the economy as a whole. It’s not about any individual failing, it’s about hundreds of thousands of people failing.
Picture is staged.