This reading really surprised me; I didn’t know that after world’s fair New York’s economic crisis was that serious. Many leading businesses were moving out of the city, and the creation of highways facilitates the outward moving trend. At the beginning, everything just seems to be completely helpless. The high interest rate and the bad city reputation all drove people away from New York City.

In 1963, when the city bond’s rate was downgraded to the “high risk”, which means that the city had to paid a huge interest rate for borrowing money to maintain itself. In order for the city to operate, it must borrow more and more moneys; therefore, New York City “was falling ever deeper into debit.” The two main reasons for the low rank of city’s bond was that there were huge amount of bonds needed to be sold, and the city’s reputation as a business center was falling apart.

One of the interesting things that I learned from this reading is that although all of other business units weren’t doing well, the media and news industry tended to grow in a large percentage. I can understand that New York City as one of the biggest broadcast city, media industry will definitely play an important role in the successes of other business. I think that during the economic crisis, not only people depended on the news and the media to get the information they need, many business and even the government units would use media to advertise and try to catch people’s attentions.

One of the bad things that media brought to people was that as the media continuously to report bad things about the city, people would lose faith about the city. With all those crimes and businesses going bankrupt reported in the media, people lose their confidences; and probably that’s why everything seems to be helpless. Potential investors would not put any money into the market, because they might think that the financial market in New York City was dangerous especially when all those leading firms were continuously moving out.

Eventually, groups like the Association for a Better New York helped to create a better image of New York City. Although, many criticized the group as operating for their own profit, I think that they still deserve the credit for what they did for the city. The biggest take away from this reading was that the city’s reputation could really affect its financial successes.