Wall Street: Difference between revisions

Coordinates: 40°42′23″N 74°00′34″W / 40.70639°N 74.00944°W / 40.70639; -74.00944
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{{Other uses}}
{{Other uses}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=September 2010}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=September 2010}}
{{Infobox street
|marker_image=
|name=Wall Street
|alternate_name=
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|map=
|length_mi=
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|length_notes=
|established=
|decommissioned=
|direction_a=West
|terminus_a=[[Broadway (New York City)|Broadway]] in [[Manhattan]]
|junction=
|direction_b=East
|terminus_b=[[South Street (Manhattan)|South Street]] in [[Manhattan]]
|counties=
|cities=
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}}
[[File:Photos NewYork1 032.jpg|right|thumb|250px|The [[New York Stock Exchange]] as seen from Wall Street]]
[[File:Photos NewYork1 032.jpg|right|thumb|250px|The [[New York Stock Exchange]] as seen from Wall Street]]
[[File:Wall Street map2.svg|thumb|250px|Map of Wall Street as it runs today]]
[[File:Wall Street map2.svg|thumb|250px|Map of Wall Street as it runs today]]
{{New Netherland}}
'''Wall Street''' is a street in [[Lower Manhattan]], [[New York City]]. It runs east from [[Broadway (New York City)|Broadway]] to [[South Street (Manhattan)|South Street]] on the [[East River]], through the historical center of the [[Financial District, Manhattan|Financial District]]. It is the first permanent home of the [[New York Stock Exchange]], the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed companies.<ref>[http://www.world-exchanges.org World-exchanges.org]</ref> Over time, ''Wall Street'' became the name of the surrounding geographic neighborhood<ref>[http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/pdf/lucds/mn1profile.pdf Profile of Manhattan Community Board 1], retrieved July 17, 2007.</ref> and also shorthand (or a [[metonym]]) for the "influential financial interests" of the American financial industry, which is centered in the New York City area.<ref>[http://mw1.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Wall%20Street Merriam-Webster Online], retrieved July 17, 2007.</ref> Anchored by Wall Street, New York City is one of the principal [[financial centre]]s of the world.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.cnbc.com/id/29862382/The_World_s_Most_Expensive_Real_Estate_Markets?slide=9|title=The World's Most Expensive Real Estate Markets|publisher=CNBC|accessdate=May 31, 2010}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=dWA7aEbsy8QC&pg=PA154&dq=new+york+financial+capital+of+the+world+2010&hl=en&ei=SAMCTPyfO8P6lwe73OCiCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=new%20york%20financial%20capital%20of%20the%20world%202010&f=false|title=The Best 301 Business Schools 2010 by Princeton Review, Nedda Gilbert|accessdate=May 31, 2010}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=22541|title=Financial Capital of the World: NYC|publisher=Wired New York/Bloomberg|accessdate=May 31, 2010}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123940286075109617.html|title=The Tax Capital of the World|publisher=The Wall Street Journal|accessdate=May 31, 2010 | date=April 11, 2009}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2010/04/editorializing-from-the-financial-capital-of-the-world.html|title=JustOneMinute – Editorializing From The Financial Capital Of The World|accessdate=May 31, 2010}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.marketwatch.com/story/credit-crunch-shows-new-york-is-still-worlds-financial-capital/|title=London may have the IPOs...|publisher=Marketwatch|accessdate=May 31, 2010}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.cincodias.com/articulo/mercados/Londres-versus-Nueva-York/20080901cdscdimer_3/cdsmer/|title=Fondos – Londres versus Nueva York|format=PDF|publisher=Cinco Dias|accessdate=May 31, 2010}}</ref>
[[Image:CastelloPlanOriginal.jpg|thumb|The original city map called the [[Castello Plan]] from 1660, showing the wall on the right side]]

Several major U.S. stock and other exchanges remain headquartered on Wall Street and in the Financial District, including the [[NYSE]], [[NASDAQ]], [[American Stock Exchange|AMEX]], [[NYMEX]], [[NYBOT]].

==History==
[[Image:CastelloPlanOriginal.jpg|thumb|The original city map called [[Castello Plan]] from 1660, showing the wall on the right side]]
[[File:Wall Street IRT 008c.JPG|thumb|Depiction of the wall of New Amsterdam on a tile in [[Wall Street (IRT Lexington Avenue Line)]] subway station]]
[[File:Wall Street IRT 008c.JPG|thumb|Depiction of the wall of New Amsterdam on a tile in [[Wall Street (IRT Lexington Avenue Line)]] subway station]]
{{Image|Tontine coffee house.jpg|thumb|right|Wall Street in 1797.}}
[[File:New York City Hall 1789b.jpg|thumb|Conjectural view of Wall Street, as it probably looked at the time of Washington's 1789 inauguration]]
[[File:New York City Hall 1789b.jpg|thumb|Conjectural view of Wall Street, as it probably looked at the time of Washington's 1789 inauguration]]
{{Image|1847 Lower Manhattan map.jpg|thumb|right|1847 map showing the street layout and ferry routes for lower Manhattan.}}
[[Image:wall street 1867.jpg|thumb|View of Wall Street from corner of Broad Street, 1867: The building on the left was the [[U.S. Customs and Border Protection|U.S. Customs House]]. Today it's the home of the [[Federal Hall National Memorial]].]]
[[Image:wall street 1867.jpg|thumb|View of Wall Street from corner of Broad Street, 1867: The building on the left was the [[U.S. Customs and Border Protection|U.S. Customs House]]. Today it's the home of the [[Federal Hall National Memorial]].]]
{{Image|Lower Manhattan 001.jpg|thumb|right|Lower Manhattan around 1914.}}
{{New Netherland}}


'''Wall Street''' refers to the [[Financial District, Manhattan|financial district]] of [[New York City]],<ref>[http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/pdf/lucds/mn1profile.pdf Profile of Manhattan Community Board 1], retrieved July 17, 2007.</ref> named after and centered on the eight-block-long street running from [[Broadway (New York City)|Broadway]] to [[South Street (Manhattan)|South Street]] on the [[East River]] in [[lower Manhattan]]. Over time, the term has become a [[metonym]] for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, or signifying New York-based financial interests.<ref>[http://mw1.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Wall%20Street Merriam-Webster Online], retrieved July 17, 2007.</ref> It is the home of the [[New York Stock Exchange]], the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed companies.<ref>[http://www.world-exchanges.org World-exchanges.org]</ref> Several other major exchanges have or had headquarters in the Wall Street area, including [[NASDAQ]], the [[New York Mercantile Exchange]], the [[New York Board of Trade]], and the former [[American Stock Exchange]]. Anchored by Wall Street, New York City is the principal [[financial center]]s of the world.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.cnbc.com/id/29862382/The_World_s_Most_Expensive_Real_Estate_Markets?slide=9|title=The World's Most Expensive Real Estate Markets|publisher=CNBC|accessdate=May 31, 2010}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=dWA7aEbsy8QC&pg=PA154&dq=new+york+financial+capital+of+the+world+2010&hl=en&ei=SAMCTPyfO8P6lwe73OCiCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=new%20york%20financial%20capital%20of%20the%20world%202010&f=false|title=The Best 301 Business Schools 2010 by Princeton Review, Nedda Gilbert|accessdate=May 31, 2010}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aEC0OYmvvcZM|title=New York Eclipses London as Financial Center in Bloomberg Poll |publisher=Bloomberg News|accessdate=March 30, 2011}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123940286075109617.html|title=The Tax Capital of the World|publisher=The Wall Street Journal|accessdate=May 31, 2010 | date=April 11, 2009}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2010/04/editorializing-from-the-financial-capital-of-the-world.html|title=JustOneMinute – Editorializing From The Financial Capital Of The World|accessdate=May 31, 2010}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.marketwatch.com/story/credit-crunch-shows-new-york-is-still-worlds-financial-capital/|title=London may have the IPOs...|publisher=Marketwatch|accessdate=May 31, 2010}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.cincodias.com/articulo/mercados/Londres-versus-Nueva-York/20080901cdscdimer_3/cdsmer/|title=Fondos – Londres versus Nueva York|format=PDF|publisher=Cinco Dias|accessdate=May 31, 2010}}</ref>
The name of the street derives from the 17th century when Wall Street formed the northern boundary of the [[New Amsterdam]] settlement. It was constructed to protect against English colonial encroachment. In the 1640s basic picket and plank fences denoted plots and residences in the colony.<ref name=Sullivan>[The History of New York State, Book II, Chapter II, Part IV.] Editor, Dr. James Sullivan, Online Edition by Holice, Deb & Pam. Retrieved August 20, 2006.</ref> Later, on behalf of the [[Dutch West India Company]], [[Peter Stuyvesant]], using both African slaves <ref name="White New Yorkers in Slave Times">[http://www.slaveryinnewyork.org/PDFs/White_New_Yorkers.pdf White New Yorkers in Slave Times] [[New-York Historical Society]]. Retrieved August 20, 2006. (PDF)</ref> and white colonists, collaborated with the city government in the construction of a stronger stockade. A strengthened {{convert|12|ft|m|0|sing=on}} wall<ref Name=timeline>[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/crash/timeline/ Timeline: A selected Wall Street chronology] PBS Online, 21 Octoberenculer de ta mere fils de puteense</ref> against attack from various Native American tribes. In 1685 surveyors laid out Wall Street along the lines of the original stockade.<ref Name=timeline>[http://www.nyse.com/about/history/timeline_chronology_index.html NYSE Timeline] 2006 NYSE Group, Inc. Retrieved August 1, 2006.</ref> The wall started at Pearl Street, which was the shoreline at that time, crossing the Indian path Broadway and ending at the other shoreline (today's Trinity Place), where it took a turn south and ran along the shore until it ended at the old fort.


[[File:Depression-stock-market-crash-1929.jpg|thumb|Wall Street in the stock market crash of 1929]]
Because Wall Street was originally called "de Waal Straat",<ref name="let.rug.nl">[http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/images/nadam2.gif The street on the map of Nieuw-Amsterdam]</ref> another explanation is that it could refer to Walloons (one translation for Waal is a Walloon).<ref>{{cite news | url = http://www.loc.gov/wiseguide/mar09/wallets.html | title = Walloons and Wallets| date = 2009-03 | accessdate = 2010-09-24 | publisher = the loc.gov}}</ref> Among the first settlers that embarked on the ship "Nieu Nederlandt" in 1624 were 30 Walloon families.


==History==
In the late 18th century, there was a [[American sycamore|buttonwood]] tree at the foot of Wall Street under which [[Trader (finance)|traders]] and speculators would gather to trade informally. In 1792, the traders formalized their association with the [[Buttonwood Agreement]]. This was the origin of the [[New York Stock Exchange]].<ref>[http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/jan04.html Today in History: January 4 – The New York Stock Exchange] The Library of Congress. Retrieved 19 August 20068.</ref>
===Early years===
Lower Manhattan was the first area in the city to be settled by Europeans, in 1623, according to one account.<ref name=twsJanN312a/> Dutch settlers had houses, farms, and a few stores in this growing New World port. One Dutch farmer named Annotkje Janz had a farm in lower Manhattan and is buried in [[Trinity Church (New York City)|Trinity Church]],<ref>Gravestone of Annotkje Janz found in Trinity Church second row, #11 from west</ref> and the last Dutch mayor [[Peter Stuyvesant]] ran [[New Amsterdam]] until 1664, when it was ceded to [[United Kingdom|Britain]] and had its name changed to [[New York, New York|New York]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.njcu.edu/programs/jchistory/Pages/S_Pages/Stuyvesant_Peter.htm|work=Jersey City: Past and Present Project|accessdate=2006-11-01|title=Peter Stuyvesant, 1646-1664}}</ref>


There are varying accounts about how the Dutch-named "de Waal Straat"<ref name="let.rug.nl">[http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/images/nadam2.gif The street on the map of Nieuw-Amsterdam]</ref> got its name. A generally accepted version is that the name of the street name was derived from an earthen wall on the northern boundary of the [[New Amsterdam]] settlement, perhaps to protect against English colonial encroachment or incursions by native Americans. A conflicting explanation is that Wall Street was named after ''[[Walloons]]'' -- possibly a Dutch abbreviation for ''Walloon'' being ''Waal''.<ref>{{cite news | url = http://www.loc.gov/wiseguide/mar09/wallets.html | title = Walloons and Wallets| date = 2009-03 | accessdate = 2010-09-24 | publisher = the loc.gov}}</ref> Among the first settlers that embarked on the ship "Nieu Nederlandt" in 1624 were 30 Walloon families.
In 1789, [[Federal Hall]] and Wall Street was the scene of the United States' first presidential inauguration. George Washington took the oath of office on the balcony of Federal Hall overlooking Wall Street on April 30, 1789. This was also the location of the passing of the Bill Of Rights.


In the 1640s, basic picket and plank fences denoted plots and residences in the colony.<ref name=Sullivan>[The History of New York State, Book II, Chapter II, Part IV.] Editor, Dr. James Sullivan, Online Edition by Holice, Deb & Pam. Retrieved August 20, 2006.</ref> Later, on behalf of the [[Dutch West India Company]], [[Peter Stuyvesant]], using both African slaves<ref name="White New Yorkers in Slave Times">[http://www.slaveryinnewyork.org/PDFs/White_New_Yorkers.pdf White New Yorkers in Slave Times] [[New-York Historical Society]]. Retrieved August 20, 2006. (PDF)</ref> and white colonists, collaborated with the city government in the construction of a stronger stockade. A strengthened {{convert|12|ft|m|0|sing=on}} wall<ref Name=timeline>[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/crash/timeline/ Timeline: A selected Wall Street chronology] PBS Online, 21 Octoberenculer de ta mere fils de puteense</ref> against attack from various Native American tribes. In 1685 surveyors laid out Wall Street along the lines of the original stockade.<ref Name=timeline>[http://www.nyse.com/about/history/timeline_chronology_index.html NYSE Timeline] 2006 NYSE Group, Inc. Retrieved August 1, 2006.</ref> The wall started at Pearl Street, which was the shoreline at that time, crossing the Indian path Broadway and ending at the other shoreline (today's Trinity Place), where it took a turn south and ran along the shore until it ended at the old fort. In these early days, local merchants and traders would gather at disparate spots to buy and sell shares and bonds, and over time divided themselves into two classes—auctioneers and dealers.<ref name=twsJanSb/>
In 1889, the original stock report, ''Customers' Afternoon Letter'', became ''[[The Wall Street Journal]]''. Named in reference to the actual street, it is now an influential international daily business newspaper published in [[New York, New York|New York City]].<ref>[http://www.dowjones.com/TheCompany/History/History.htm DOW JONES HISTORY – THE LATE 1800s] 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. Retrieved August 19, 2006.</ref> For many years, it had the widest [[newspaper circulation|circulation]] of any newspaper in the United States, although it is currently second to ''[[USA Today]]''.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.robertfulford.com/WallStreetJournal.html |title=The Wall Street Journal redesigns itself |accessdate=August 19, 2006 |last=Fulford |first=Robert |coauthors= |date=April 20, 2002 |work= |publisher=}}</ref> It has been owned by Rupert Murdoch's [[News Corp.]] since 2007.


In the late 18th century, there was a [[American sycamore|buttonwood]] tree at the foot of Wall Street under which [[Trader (finance)|traders]] and speculators would gather to trade securities.<ref name=twsJanN215a/> The benefit was being in close proximity to each other.<ref name=twsJanN215a/> In 1792, traders formalized their association with the [[Buttonwood Agreement]] which was the origin of the [[New York Stock Exchange]].<ref>[http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/jan04.html Today in History: January 4 – The New York Stock Exchange] The Library of Congress. Retrieved 19 August 20068.</ref> The idea of the agreement was to make the market more "structured" and "without the manipulative auctions", with a commission structure.<ref name=twsJanSb/> Persons signing the agreement agreed to charge each other a standard commission rate; persons not signing could still participate but would be charged a higher commission for dealing.<ref name=twsJanSb/>
===Decline and revitalization===
{{Unreferenced section|date=July 2009}}
The Manhattan [[Financial District (Manhattan)|Financial District]] is one of the largest business districts in the United States, and second in New York City only to [[Midtown Manhattan|Midtown]]. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the corporate culture of New York was a primary center for the construction of skyscrapers (rivaled only by Chicago). The Financial District, even today, actually makes up a distinct skyline of its own, separate from but not soaring to quite the same heights as its [[Midtown Manhattan|midtown]] counterpart a few miles to the north.


In 1789, Wall Street was the scene of the United States' first presidential inauguration when [[George Washington]] took the oath of office on the balcony of [[Federal Hall]] on April 30, 1789. This was also the location of the passing of the [[United States Bill of Rights|Bill Of Rights]]. In the cemetery of Trinity Church, [[Alexander Hamilton]], who was the first Treasury secretary and "architect of the early United States financial system," is buried.<ref name=twsJanO53a>{{cite news
Built in 1914, [[23 Wall Street]] was known as the "[[JPMorgan Chase & Co.|House of Morgan]]" and for decades the bank's headquarters was the most important address in American finance. At noon, on September 16, 1920, a bomb exploded in front of the bank, killing 38 and injuring 300. Shortly before the bomb went off a warning note was placed in a mailbox at the corner of Cedar Street and Broadway. While theories abound about who was behind the [[Wall Street bombing]] and why they did it, after twenty years investigating the matter, the [[FBI]] rendered the file inactive in 1940 without ever finding the perpetrators. The explosion did, however, help fuel the [[Red Scare]] that was underway at the time.
|author= Daniel Gross
|title= The Capital of Capital No More?
|publisher= ''The New York Times: Magazine''
|date= October 14, 2007
|url= http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/magazine/14wallstreet-t.html
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref>


===Nineteenth century===
[[Image:Crowd outside nyse.jpg|thumb|A crowd gathers at the intersection of Wall and Broad streets after the 1929 crash. The [[New York Stock Exchange]] (18 Broad Street) is on the right. The majority of people are congregating in Wall Street on the left between the "House of Morgan" ([[23 Wall Street]]) and [[Federal Hall]] (26 Wall Street).]]
In the first few decades, both residences and businesses occupied the area, but increasingly business predominated. "There are old stories of people's houses being surrounded by the clamor of business and trade and the owners complaining that they can't get anything done," according to a historian named Burrows.<ref name=twsJanN312a/> The opening of the [[Erie Canal]] in the early 19th century meant a huge boom in business for New York City, since it was the only major eastern seaport which had direct access by inland waterways to ports on the [[Great Lakes]]. Wall Street became the "money capital of America".<ref name=twsJanN215a>{{cite news
|author= Noelle Knox and Martha T. Moor
|title= 'Wall Street' migrates to Midtown
|publisher= ''USA Today''
|date= 2001-10-24
|url= http://www.usatoday.com/news/sept11/2001/10/24/midtown.htm
|accessdate= 2010-01-14
}}</ref>


Historian Charles R. Geisst suggested that there has constantly been a "tug-of-war" between business interests on Wall Street and authorities in [[Washington, D.C.]].<ref name=twsJanSb>{{cite news
The [[Wall Street Crash of 1929|stock market crash of 1929]] ushered in the [[Great Depression]]. During this era, development of the financial district stagnated. Construction of the [[World Trade Center]] was one of the few major projects undertaken during the last three quarters of the 20th century and, financially, it was not originally as successful as planned. Some point to the fact that it was actually a government-funded project, constructed by the [[Port Authority of New York and New Jersey|Port Authority]] of [[New York State|New York]] and [[New Jersey]] with the intention of spurring economic development downtown. All the tools necessary for international trade were to be housed in the complex. However, at the beginning, much of the space remained vacant.
|author= Charles R. Geisst
|title= Wall Street: a history : from its beginnings to the fall of Enron
|publisher= ''Oxford University Press''
|year= 1997
|isbn= 0-19-511512-0
|url= http://books.google.com/books?id=GDMmB3nEtL0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=geisst+wall+street+history+enron&source=bl&ots=Exp50d1RqV&sig=opQMuLIKNG3ms1TNs2gPvKGoiDY&hl=en&ei=KZc3TbLgEs2tgQeXr6iLCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&sqi=2&ved=0CD4Q6AEwBA#v=onepage&q&f=false
|accessdate= 2010-01-19
}}</ref> Generally during the 19th century Wall Street developed its own "unique personality and institutions" with little outside interference.<ref name=twsJanSb/>


In the 1840s and 1850s, most residents moved north to midtown because of the increased business use at the lower tip of the island.<ref name=twsJanN312a/> The Civil War had the effect of causing the northern economy to boom, bringing greater prosperity to cities like New York which "came into its own as the nation's banking center" connecting "Old World capital and New World ambition", according to one account.<ref name=twsJanO53a/> [[J. P. Morgan]] created giant trusts; [[John D. Rockefeller]]’s [[Standard Oil]] moved to New York.<ref name=twsJanO53a/> Between 1860 and 1920, the economy changed from "agricultural to industrial to financial" and New York maintained its leadership position despite these changes, according to historian Thomas Kessner.<ref name=twsJanO53a/> New York was second only to London as the world's financial capital.<ref name=twsJanO53a/>
Nonetheless, some large and powerful firms did purchase space in the World Trade Center. Further, it attracted other powerful businesses to the immediate neighborhood. In some ways, it could be argued that the World Trade Center changed the nexus of the Financial District from Wall Street to the Trade Center complex. When the World Trade Center was destroyed in the [[September 11, 2001 attacks]], it left somewhat of an architectural void as new developments since the 1970s had played off the complex aesthetically. The attacks, however, contributed to the loss of business on Wall Street, due to temporary-to-permanent relocation to New Jersey and further decentralization with establishments transferred to cities like Chicago, Denver, and Boston.


In 1884, [[Charles H. Dow]] began tracking stocks, initially beginning with 11 stocks, mostly railroads, and looked at average prices for these eleven.<ref name=twsJanSa>{{cite news
Wall Street itself and the Financial District as a whole are crowded with highrises by any measure. Further, the loss of the World Trade Center has actually spurred development in the Financial District on a scale that hadn't been seen in decades. This is in part due to tax incentives provided by the federal, state and local governments to encourage development. A new World Trade Center complex, centered on [[Daniel Liebeskind]]'s [[Memory Foundations]] plan, is in the early stages of development and one building has already been replaced. The centerpiece to this plan is the {{convert|1776|ft|m|0|sing=on}} tall [[1 World Trade Center]] (formerly known as the Freedom Tower). New residential buildings are already sprouting up, and buildings that were previously office space are being converted to residential units, also benefiting from the tax incentives. Better access to the Financial District is planned in the form of a new commuter rail station and a new downtown transportation center centered on [[Fulton Street (Manhattan)|Fulton Street]].
|title= Description - Dow Jones Industrial Average Index
If you look at the building on the left, you will see that it is most likely modeled after the Greek Parthenon.<ref>What building?</ref>
|publisher= ''MarketVolume''
|date= 2010-01-19
|url= http://www.marketvolume.com/indexes_exchanges/dji_description.asp
|accessdate= 2010-01-19
}}</ref> When the average "peaks and troughs" went up consistently, he deemed it a bull market condition; if averages dropped, it was a bear market.<ref name=twsJanSa/> He added up prices, and divided by the number of stocks to get his Dow Jones average. Dow's numbers were a "convenient benchmark" for analyzing the market and became an accepted way to look at the entire stock market.<ref name=twsJanSa/>


In 1889, the original stock report, ''Customers' Afternoon Letter'', became ''[[The Wall Street Journal]]''. Named in reference to the actual street, it became an influential international daily business newspaper published in [[New York, New York|New York City]].<ref>[http://www.dowjones.com/TheCompany/History/History.htm DOW JONES HISTORY – THE LATE 1800s] 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. Retrieved August 19, 2006.</ref> After October 7, 1896, it began publishing Dow's expanded list of stocks.<ref name=twsJanSa/> A century later, there were 30 stocks in the average.
==Buildings==
[[Image:Federal Hall NYC1.jpg|thumb|right|220px|[[Federal Hall]], Wall Street.]]
Wall Street's architecture is generally rooted in the [[Gilded Age]], though there are also some [[art deco]] influences in the neighborhood. Landmark buildings on Wall Street include [[Federal Hall]], [[14 Wall Street]] ([[Bankers Trust Company Building]]), [[40 Wall Street]] (The Trump Building) the [[New York Stock Exchange]] at the corner of [[Broad Street (Manhattan)|Broad Street]] and the US headquarters of Deutsche Bank at [[60 Wall Street]]. The Deutsche Bank building (formerly the J.P Morgan headquarters) is the last remaining major investment bank to still have its headquarters on Wall Street.


===Twentieth century===
==Personalities==
Historian [[John Brooks (writer)|John Brooks]] in his book ''Once in Golconda'' considered the turn of the 20th century period to have been Wall Street's ''heyday''.<ref name=twsJanO53a/> The address of 23 Wall Street where the headquarters of [[J.P. Morgan & Co.|J. P. Morgan & Company]], known as ''The Corner'', was "the precise center, geographical as well as metaphorical, of financial America and even of the financial world."<ref name=twsJanO53a/>
{{Unreferenced section|date=July 2009}}
<!-- [[Image:Charging Bull at Bowling Green 060621.jpg|thumb|left|180px|''[[Charging Bull]]'' by [[Arturo Di Modica]] in [[Bowling Green (New York City)|Bowling Green]], New York]] - "Fair use" of this image is claimed to illustrate the north end of Bowling Green Park. That does not extend to use in this article. -->


Wall Street has had changing relationships with government authorities. In 1913, for example, when authorities proposed a $4 tax on stock transfers, stock clerks protested.<ref name=twsJanN213>{{cite news
Over the years, certain elite persons associated with Wall Street have become famous. Although their reputations are usually limited to members of the [[stock broker]]age and banking communities, several have gained national and international fame. Some earned their fame for their investment strategies, financing, reporting, legal or regulatory skills, while others are remembered for their greed.<ref name="test">[http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/2009/1/2009_1_52.shtml John Steele Gordon] "Wall Street's 10 Most Notorious Stock Traders," ''American Heritage'', Spring 2009.</ref> One of the most iconic representations of the market prosperity is the ''[[Charging Bull]]'' sculpture, by [[Arturo Di Modica]]. Representing the [[bull market]] economy, the sculpture was originally placed in front of the [[New York Stock Exchange]], and subsequently moved to its current location in [[Bowling Green (New York City)|Bowling Green]].
|title= WALL STREET CLERKS FIGHT NEW STOCK TAX; Employes in Financial District, Including Waiters and Elevator Men, Enlisted in Movement.
|publisher= ''The New York Times''
|date= March 6, 1913
|url= http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40810FE3C5B13738DDDAF0894DB405B838DF1D3
|accessdate= 2010-01-14
}}</ref> At other times, city and state officials have taken steps through tax incentives to encourage financial firms to continue to do business in the city.


In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the [[corporate culture]] of New York was a primary center for the construction of [[skyscraper]]s, and was rivaled only by [[Chicago, Illinois|Chicago]] on the American continent. There were also residential sections, such as the Bowling Green section between Broadway and the [[Hudson river]], and between [[Vesey Street]] and the Battery. The [[Bowling Green (Manhattan)|Bowling Green]] area was described as "Wall Street's [[back yard]]" with poor people, high [[infant mortality]] rates, and the "worst housing conditions in the city."<ref name=twsJanN412>{{cite news
Wall Street's culture is often criticized as being rigid. This is a decades-old stereotype stemming from the Wall Street establishment's protection of its interests, and the link to the [[White Anglo-Saxon Protestant|WASP]] establishment. More recent criticism has centered on structural problems and lack of a desire to change well-established habits. Wall Street's establishment resists government oversight and regulation. At the same time, New York City has a reputation as a very bureaucratic city, which makes entry into the neighborhood difficult or even impossible for middle class entrepreneurs.
|title= TO CLEAR BACK YARD OF WALL ST. DISTRICT; Bowling Green Neighborhood Association Reports Progress in Lower Manhattan. CITY OFFICIALS GIVE AID Work Said to be Experiment Offering Great Promise for a Community Plan.
|publisher= ''The New York Times''
|date= May 14, 1916
|url= http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10A16FA3F5D17738DDDAD0994DD405B868DF1D3
|accessdate= 2010-01-14
}}</ref> As a result of the construction, looking at New York City from the east, one can see two distinct clumps of tall buildings—the financial district on the left, and the taller [[Midtown Manhattan|midtown]] district on the right. The [[geology]] of Manhattan is well-suited for tall buildings, with a solid mass of [[bedrock]] underneath Manhattan providing a firm foundation for tall buildings. Skyscrapers are expensive to build, but when there is a "short supply of land" in a "desirable location", then building upwards makes sound financial sense.<ref name=twsJanO44>{{cite news
|title= Better than flying: Despite the attack on the twin towers, plenty of skyscrapers are rising. They are taller and more daring than ever, but still mostly monuments to magnificence
|publisher= ''The Economist''
|date= Jun 1st 2006
|url= http://www.economist.com/node/7001496
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref> A post office was built at [[60 Wall Street]] in 1905.<ref name=twsJanO27>{{cite news
|title= WALL STREET P.O. BRANCH.; Postmaster General Yields to Request of Financial District.
|publisher= ''The New York Times''
|date= March 14, 1905
|url= http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70A1EFA3A5F13718DDDAD0994DB405B858CF1D3
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref> During the [[World War I]] years, occasionally there were fund-raising efforts for projects such as the National Guard.<ref name=twsJanO14>{{cite news
|title= SHOW GIRLS MAKE WALL STREET RAID; They Invade Financial District and Sell Tickets for Soldiers' Relief. BROKERS HARD TO CATCH Party Welcomed at Morgan Offices, but No Sales Were Made There.
|publisher= ''The New York Times''
|date= July 27, 1916
|url= http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70617F63C5F13738DDDAE0A94DF405B868DF1D3
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref>


On September 16, 1920, close to the corner of Wall and Broad Street, the busiest corner of the financial district and across the offices of the [[23 Wall Street|Morgan Bank]], a [[Wall Street bombing|powerful bomb exploded]]. It killed 38 and seriously injured 143 people.<ref>Beverly Gage, ''The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in its First Age of Terror.'' New York: Oxford University Press, 2009; pp. 160-161.</ref> The perpetrators were never identified or apprehended. The explosion did, however, help fuel the [[Red Scare]] that was underway at the time. A report from the ''[[New York Times]]'':
The ethnic background of Wall Streeters remains largely unchanged since the days of the railway barons of the early 20th century, as documented by their portraits in the Wall+Broad chapter of The Corners Project<ref name="test">[http://www.thecornersproject.com The Corners Project], .</ref>


{{cquote|The tomb-like silence that settles over Wall Street and lower Broadway with the coming of night and the suspension of business was entirely changed last night as hundreds of men worked under the glare of searchlights to repair the damage to skyscrapers that were lighted up from top to bottom. ... The Assay Office, nearest the point of explosion, naturally suffered the most. The front was pierced in fifty places where the cast iron slugs, which were of the material used for window weights, were thrown against it. Each slug penetrated the stone an inch or two and chipped off pieces ranging from three inches to a foot in diameter. The ornamental iron grill work protecting each window was broken or shattered. ... the Assay Office was a wreck. ... It was as though some gigantic force had overturned the building and then placed it upright again, leaving the framework uninjured but scrambling everything inside. -- 1920<ref name=twsJanN512>{{cite news
Several well known Wall Street individuals include [[John Meriwether]], [[John Briggs]], [[Michael Bloomberg]], and [[Warren Buffett]] (All affiliated at one time or another with the firm [[Salomon Brothers]]), as well as [[Bernie Madoff]], and numerous others.
|title= WALL STREET NIGHT TURNED INTO DAY
|publisher= ''The New York Times''
|date= September 17, 1920
|url= http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F00914F7355511738DDDAE0994D1405B808EF1D3
|accessdate= 2010-01-14
}}</ref>}}


The area was subjected to numerous threats; one bomb threat in 1921 led to detectives sealing off the area to "prevent a repetition of the Wall Street bomb explosion."<ref name=twsJanO16>{{cite news
==Cultural influence==
|title= DETECTIVES GUARD WALL ST. AGAINST NEW BOMB OUTRAGE; Entire Financial District Patrolled Following AnonymousWarning to a Broker
=== Wall Street vs. Main Street ===
|publisher= ''The New York Times''
{{Unreferenced section|date=July 2009}}
|date= December 19, 1921
|url= http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FA0A10FB3A5A1B7A93CBA81789D95F458285F9
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref>
[[Image:Crowd outside nyse.jpg|thumb|A crowd at Wall and Broad streets after the 1929 crash. The [[New York Stock Exchange]] is on the right. The majority of people are congregating in Wall Street on the left between the "House of Morgan" ([[23 Wall Street]]) and [[Federal Hall]] (26 Wall Street).]]

=== Regulation ===
In October 1929, a celebrated [[Yale University|Yale]] [[economist]] named Irving Fisher reassured worried investors that their "money was safe" on Wall Street.<ref name=twsJanO15a>{{cite news
|author= Larry Elliott (reviewer) Steve Fraser (author) (book:) Wall Street: A cultural History (by Fraser)
|title= Going for brokers: Steve Fraser charts the highs and the lows of the world's financial capital in Wall Stree
|publisher= ''The Guardian''
|date= 21 May 2005
|url= http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/may/21/featuresreviews.guardianreview11
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref> A few days later, stock values plummeted. The [[Wall Street Crash of 1929|stock market crash of 1929]] ushered in the [[Great Depression]] in which a quarter of working people were unemployed, with soup kitchens, mass foreclosures of farms, and falling prices.<ref name=twsJanO15a/> During this era, development of the financial district stagnated, and Wall Street "paid a heavy price" and "became something of a backwater in American life."<ref name=twsJanO15a/> During the [[New Deal]] years as well as the forties, there was much less focus on Wall Street and finance. The government clamped down on the practice of buying equities based only on credit, but these policies began to ease. From 1946-1947, stocks could not be purchased "[[Margin (finance)|on margin]]", meaning that an investor had to pay 100% of a stock's cost without taking on any loans.<ref name=twsJanO41a/> But this margin requirement was reduced four times before 1960, each time stimulating a mini-rally and boosting volume, and when the Federal Reserve reduced the margin requirements from 90% to 70%.<ref name=twsJanO41a/> These changes made it somewhat easier for investors to buy stocks on credit.<ref name=twsJanO41a>{{cite news
|title= STOCK MARKET MARGINS: The Federal Reserve v. Wall Street
|publisher= ''Time Magazine''
|date= Aug. 08, 1960
|url= http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,869769,00.html
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref> The growing national economy and prosperity led to a recovery during the sixties, with some down years during the early seventies in the aftermath of the [[Vietnam War]]. Trading volumes climbed; in 1967, according to ''[[Time Magazine]]'', volume hit 7.5 million shares a day which caused a "traffic jam" of paper with "batteries of clerks" working overtime to "clear transactions and update customer accounts."<ref name=twsJanO28>{{cite news
|title= Wall Street: Bob Cratchit Hours
|publisher= ''Time Magazine''
|date= Aug. 18, 1967
|url= http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,841001,00.html
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref> In 1973, the financial community posted a collective loss of $245 million and needed and help, and got it with the form of temporary help from the goverrnment.<ref name=twsJanO32b>{{cite news
|title= WALL STREET: Help for Broke Brokers
|publisher= ''Time Magazine''
|date= Sep. 24, 1973
|url= http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,907961,00.html
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref> Reforms happened; the SEC eliminated fixed commissions which forced "brokers to compete freely with one another for investors' business."<ref name=twsJanO32a>{{cite news
|title= WALL STREET: Help for Broke Brokers
|publisher= ''Time Magazine''
|date= Sep. 24, 1973
|url= http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,907961,00.html
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref> In 1975, the Securities & Exchange Commission threw out the NYSE's "Rule 394" which had required that "most stock transactions take place on the Big Board's floor", in effect freeing up trading for electronic methods.<ref name=twsJanO31>{{cite news
|title= WALL STREET: Banks As Brokers
|publisher= ''Time Magazine''
|date= Aug. 30, 1976
|url= http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,918271,00.html
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref> In 1976, banks were allowed to buy and sell stocks, which provided more competition for stockbrokers.<ref name=twsJanO31/> Reforms had the effect of lowering prices overall, making it easier for more people to participate in the stock market.<ref name=twsJanO31/> Broker commissions for each stock sale lessened, but volume increased.<ref name=twsJanO32b/>

The [[Presidency of Ronald Reagan|Reagan years]] were marked by a renewed push for [[capitalism]], [[business]], with national efforts to de-regulate industries such as [[telecommunications]] and [[aviation]]. The economy resumed upward growth after a period in the early eighties of languishing. A report in the ''[[New York Times]]'' described that the flushness of money and growth during these years had spawned a drug culture of sorts, with a rampant acceptance of cocaine use although the overall percent of actual users was most likely small. A reporter wrote:

{{cquote|The Wall Street drug dealer looked like many other successful young female executives. Stylishly dressed and wearing designer sunglasses, she sat in her 1983 Chevrolet Camaro in a no-parking zone across the street from the Marine Midland Bank branch on lower Broadway. The customer in the passenger seat looked like a successful young businessman. But as the dealer slipped him a heat-sealed plastic envelope of cocaine and he passed her cash, the transaction was being watched through the sunroof of her car by Federal drug agents in a nearby building. And the customer - an undercover agent himself -was learning the ways, the wiles and the conventions of Wall Street's drug subculture. -- Peter Kerr in the ''[[New York Times]]'', 1987.<ref name=twsJanO22>{{cite news
|author= Peter Kerr
|title= AGENTS TELL OF DRUG'S GRIP ON WALL STREET
|publisher= ''The New York Times''
|date= April 18, 1987
|url= http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1DC153CF93BA25757C0A961948260
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref>}}

In 1987, the stock market plunged<ref name=twsJanN215a/> and, in the relatively brief recession following, lower Manhattan lost 100,000 jobs according to one estimate.<ref name=twsJanN211/> Since telecommunications costs were coming down, banks and brokerage firms could move away from Wall Street to more affordable locations.<ref name=twsJanN211/> The recession of 1990&ndash;1991 were marked by office vacancy rates downtown which were "persistently high" and with some buildings "standing empty."<ref name=twsJanN312a/> The day of the drop, October 20, was marked by "stony-faced traders whose sense of humor had abandoned them and in the exhaustion of stock exchange employees struggling to maintain orderly trading."<ref name=twsJanN312>{{cite news
|author= Alison Leigh Cowan
|title= THE MARKET PLUNGE; Day to Remember In Financial District
|publisher= ''The New York Times''
|date= October 20, 1987
|url= http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE6DC1630F933A15753C1A961948260
|accessdate= 2010-01-14
}}</ref> Ironically, it was the same year that Oliver Stone's movie ''[[Wall Street (1987 film)|Wall Street]]'' appeared. In 1995, city authorities offered the ''Lower Manhattan Revitalization Plan'' which offered incentives to convert commercial properties to residential use.<ref name=twsJanN312a/>

Construction of the [[World Trade Center]] began in 1966 but had trouble attracting tenants when completed. Nonetheless, some substantial firms purchased space there. It's impressive height helped make it a visual landmark for drivers and pedestrians. In some respects, the nexus of the financial district moved from the ''street'' of Wall Street to Trade Center complex. Real estate growth during the latter part of the 1990s was significant, with deals and new projects happening in the financial district and elsewhere in Manhattan; one firm invested more than $24 billion in various projects, many in the Wall Street area.<ref name=twsJanO24>{{cite news
|author= Laura M. Holson and Charles V. Bagli
|title= Lending Without a Net; With Wall Street as Its Banker, Real Estate Feels the World's Woes
|publisher= ''The New York Times''
|date= November 1, 1998
|url= http://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/01/business/lending-without-net-with-wall-street-its-banker-real-estate-feels-world-s-woes.html
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref> In 1998, the NYSE and the city struck a $900 million deal which kept the NYSE from moving across the river to [[Jersey City, New Jersey|Jersey City]]; the deal was described as the "largest in city history to prevent a corporation from leaving town".<ref name=twsJanO34>{{cite news
|author= Charles V. Bagli
|title= City and State Agree to $900 Million Deal to Keep New York Stock Exchange
|publisher= ''The New York Times''
|date= December 23, 1998
|url= http://www.nytimes.com/1998/12/23/nyregion/city-and-state-agree-to-900-million-deal-to-keep-new-york-stock-exchange.html?src=pm
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref> A competitor to the NYSE, [[NASDAQ]], moved its headquarters from Washington to New York.<ref name=twsJanO36a>{{cite news
|author= Charles V. Bagli
|title= N.A.S.D. Ponders Move to New York City
|publisher= ''The New York Times''
|date= May 7, 1998
|url= http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D04E1DE1531F934A35756C0A96E958260
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref>

{{Image|Lower Manhattan 20.jpg|thumb|right|Lower Manhattan skyline from the Hudson River.}}
{{Image|Lower Manhattan Aerial.JPG|thumb|right|The Wall Street area from the air in 2009.}}
{{Image|Lower Manhattan by night.jpg|thumb|right|Wall Street area from Brooklyn; the [[South Street Seaport]] is at the lower middle slight right.}}

===Twenty-first century===
In the first year of the new century, the ''Big Board'', as some termed the NYSE, was described as the world's "largest and most prestigious stock market."<ref name=twsJanO35a>{{cite news
|author= Alex Berenson
|title= A NATION CHALLENGED: THE EXCHANGE; Feeling Vulnerable At Heart of Wall St.
|publisher= ''The New York Times: Business Day''
|date= October 12, 2001
|url= http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/12/business/a-nation-challenged-the-exchange-feeling-vulnerable-at-heart-of-wall-st.html?src=pm
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref> But when the World Trade Center was destroyed on [[September 11, 2001 attacks|September 11th]], it left an architectural void as new developments since the 1970s had played off the complex aesthetically. The attacks "crippled" the communications network.<ref name=twsJanO35a/> One estimate was that 45% of Wall Street's "best office space" had been lost.<ref name=twsJanN215a/> The physical destruction was immense:

{{cquote|Debris littered some streets of the financial district. National Guard members in camouflage uniforms manned checkpoints. Abandoned coffee carts, glazed with dust from the collapse of the World Trade Center, lay on their sides across sidewalks. Most subway stations were closed, most lights were still off, most telephones did not work, and only a handful of people walked in the narrow canyons of Wall Street yesterday morning. -- Leslie Eaton and Kirk Johnson of the ''[[New York Times]]'', September 16, 2001.<ref name=twsJanO18a>{{cite news
|author= Leslie Eaton and Kirk Johnson
|title= AFTER THE ATTACKS: WALL STREET; STRAINING TO RING THE OPENING BELL -- AFTER THE ATTACKS: WALL STREET
|publisher= ''The New York Times''
|date= September 16, 2001
|url= http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A03E2D7163BF935A2575AC0A9679C8B63&pagewanted=all
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref>}}

Still, the NYSE was determined to re-open on September 17, almost a week after the attack.<ref name=twsJanO18a/> The attack hastened a trend towards financial firms moving to midtown and contributed to the loss of business on Wall Street, due to temporary-to-permanent relocation to [[New Jersey]] and further decentralization with establishments transferred to cities like [[Chicago, Illinois|Chicago]], [[Denver, Colorado|Denver]], and [[Boston, Massachusetts|Boston]].

After September 11, the financial services industry went through a downturn with a sizable drop in year-end bonuses of $6.5 billion, according to one estimate from a state comptroller's office.<ref name=twsJanN214/> Many brokers are paid mostly through commission, and get a token annual salary which is dwarfed by the year-end bonus.

To guard against a vehicular bombing in the area, authorities built concrete barriers, and found ways over time to make them more aesthetically appealing by spending $5000 to $8000 apiece on ''[[bollards]]'':

{{cquote|To prevent a vehicle-delivered bomb from entering the area, Rogers Marvel designed a new kind of bollard, a faceted piece of sculpture whose broad, slanting surfaces offer people a place to sit in contrast to the typical bollard, which is supremely unsittable. The bollard, which is called the Nogo, looks a bit like one of Frank Gehry's unorthodox culture palaces, but it is hardly insensitive to its surroundings. Its bronze surfaces actually echo the grand doorways of Wall Street's temples of commerce. Pedestrians easily slip through groups of them as they make their way onto Wall Street from the area around historic Trinity Church. Cars, however, cannot pass. -- Blair Kamin in the ''[[Chicago Tribune]]'', 2006<ref name=twsJanN513>{{cite news
|author= Blair Kamin
|title= How Wall Street became secure, and welcoming
|publisher= ''Chicago Tribune''
|date= September 9, 2006
|url= http://www.chicagotribune.com/chi-090806wallstreet-story,0,1233707.story
|accessdate= 2010-01-14
}}</ref>}}

Wall Street itself and the Financial District as a whole are crowded with highrises. Further, the loss of the World Trade Center has spurred development on a scale that hadn't been seen in decades. In 2006, Goldman Sachs began building a tower near the former Trade Center site.<ref name=twsJanO44/> Tax incentives provided by federal, state and local governments encouraged development. A new World Trade Center complex, centered on [[Daniel Liebeskind]]'s [[Memory Foundations]] plan, is in the early stages of development and one building has already been replaced. The centerpiece to this plan is the {{convert|1776|ft|m|0|sing=on}} tall [[1 World Trade Center]] (formerly known as the Freedom Tower). New residential buildings are sprouting up, and buildings that were previously office space are being converted to residential units, also benefiting from tax incentives. A new [[Fulton Street Transit Center]] is planned to improve access. In 2007, the [[Maharishi Mahesh Yogi|Maharishi Global Financial Capital of New York]] opened headquarters at 70 Broad Street near the NYSE, in an effort to seek investors.<ref name=twsJanO17>{{cite news
|author= MARIA ASPAN
|title= Maharishi’s Minions Come to Wall Street
|publisher= ''The New York Times''
|date= July 2, 2007
|url= http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/02/business/worldbusiness/02maharishi.html
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref>

''[[The Guardian]]'' reporter Andrew Clark described the years of 2006 to 2010 as "tumultous" in which the heartland of America is "mired in gloom" with high unemployment around 9.6%, with average house prices falling from $230,000 in 2006 to $183,000, and foreboding increases in the national debt to $13.4 trillion, but that despite the setbacks, the American economy was once more "bouncing back."<ref name=twsJanO12a>{{cite news
|author= Andrew Clark
|title= Farewell to Wall Street: After four years as US business correspondent, Andrew Clark is heading home. He recalls the extraordinary events that nearly bankrupted America – and how it's bouncing back
|publisher= ''The Guardian''
|date= 7 October 2010
|url= http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/oct/07/farewell-to-wall-street-us-financial-crisis
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref> What had happened during these heady years? Clark wrote:

{{cquote|But the picture is too nuanced simply to dump all the responsibility on financiers. Most Wall Street banks didn't actually go around the US hawking dodgy mortgages; they bought and packaged loans from on-the-ground firms such as Countrywide Financial and New Century Financial, both of which hit a financial wall in the crisis. Foolishly and recklessly, the banks didn't look at these loans adequately, relying on flawed credit-rating agencies such as Standard & Poor's and Moody's, which blithely certified toxic mortgage-backed securities as solid... A few of those on Wall Street, including maverick hedge fund manager John Paulson and the top brass at Goldman Sachs, spotted what was going on and ruthlessly gambled on a crash. They made a fortune but turned into the crisis's pantomime villains. Most, though, got burned – the banks are still gradually running down portfolios of non-core loans worth $800bn. -- ''[[The Guardian]]'' reporter Andrew Clark, 2010.<ref name=twsJanO12a/>}}

The first months of 2008 was a particularly troublesome period which caused [[Federal Reserve System|Federal Reserve]] chairman [[Benjamin Bernanke]] to "work holidays and weekends" and which did an "extraordinary series of moves."<ref name=twsJanO37>{{cite news
|author= Steve Inskeep and Jim Zarroli
|title= Federal Reserve Bolsters Wall Street Banks
|publisher= ''NPR''
|date= March 17, 2008
|url= http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88379863
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref> It bolstered U.S. banks and allowed Wall Street firms to borrow "directly from the Fed."<ref name=twsJanO37/> These efforts were highly controversial at the time, but from the perspective of 2010, it appeared the Federal exertions had been the right decisions. By 2010, Wall Street firms, in Clark's view, were "getting back to their old selves as engine rooms of wealth, prosperity and excess."<ref name=twsJanO12a/> A report by Michael Stoler in ''[[The New York Sun]]'' described a "phoenix-like resurrection" of the area, with residential, commercial, retail and hotels booming in the "third largest business district in the country."<ref name=twsJanO19a>{{cite news
|author= Michael Stoler
|title= Refashioned: Financial District Is Booming With Business
|publisher= ''New York Sun''
|date= June 28, 2007
|url= http://www.nysun.com/real-estate/refashioned-financial-district-is-booming-with/57476/
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref> At the same time, the investment community was worried about proposed legal reforms, including the ''Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act'' which dealt with matters such as credit card rates and lending requirements.<ref name=twsJanO42>{{cite news
|author= Jill Jackson
|title= Wall Street Reform: A Summary of What's In the Bill
|publisher= ''CBS News''
|date= June 25, 2010
|url= http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20008835-503544.html
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref> The NYSE closed two of its trading floors in a move towards transforming itself into an electronic exchange.<ref name=twsJanO53a/>

==Buildings: Physical layout==
[[Image:Federal Hall NYC1.jpg|thumb|right|[[Federal Hall]], Wall Street.]]
Wall Street's architecture is generally rooted in the [[Gilded Age]], though there are also some [[art deco]] influences in the neighborhood. The layout of streets doesn't have the rectangular grid pattern typical of midtown Manhattan, but small streets "barely wide enough for a single lane of traffic are bordered on both sides by some of the tallest buildings in the city", according to one description, which creates "breathtaking artificial canyons" offering spectacular views in some instances.<ref name=twsJanN312a/> Construction in such narrow steep areas has resulted in occasional accidents such as a crane collapse.<ref name=twsJanN415>{{cite news
|author= Sarah Wheaton and Ravi Somaiya
|title= Crane Falls Against Financial District Building
|publisher= ''The New York Times''
|date= March 27, 2010
|url= http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/nyregion/28crane.html
|accessdate= 2010-01-14
}}</ref> One report divided lower Manhattan into three basic districts:<ref name=twsJanN312a/>

# The financial district proper—particularly along John Street
# South of the World Trade Center area—the handful of blocks south of the World Trade Center along [[Greenwich Street (Manhattan)|Greenwich]], Washington and West Streets
# Seaport district—characterized by century-old low-rise buildings and [[South Street Seaport]]; the seaport is "quiet, residential, and has an old world charm" according to one description.<ref name=twsJanN312a/>

Landmark buildings on Wall Street include [[Federal Hall]], [[14 Wall Street]] ([[Bankers Trust Company Building]]), [[40 Wall Street]] (The Trump Building) the [[New York Stock Exchange]] at the corner of [[Broad Street (Manhattan)|Broad Street]] and the US headquarters of Deutsche Bank at [[60 Wall Street]]. The Deutsche Bank building (formerly the J.P Morgan headquarters) is the last remaining major investment bank to still have its headquarters on Wall Street.

The older skyscrapers often were built with elaborate facades; such elaborate aesthetics haven't been common in corporate architecture for decades. The [[World Trade Center]], built in the 1970s, was very plain and utilitarian in comparison (the [[World Trade Center|Twin Towers]] were often criticized as looking like two big boxes, despite their impressive height). Excavation from the World Trade Center was later used by [[Battery Park City]] residential development as landfill.<ref name=twsJanN215a/> [[23 Wall Street]] was built in 1914 and was known as the "[[JPMorgan Chase & Co.|House of Morgan]]" and served for decades as the bank's headquarters and, by some accounts, was viewed as an important address in American finance.

A key anchor for the area is, of course, the New York Stock Exchange. City authorities realize its importance, and believed that it has "outgrown its neoclassical temple at the corner of Wall and Broad streets", and in 1998 offered substantial tax incentives to try to keep it in the financial district.<ref name=twsJanN215a/> Plans to rebuild it were delayed by the events of 2001.<ref name=twsJanN215a/> In 2011, the exchange still occupies the same site. The exchange is the locus for an impressive amount of technology and data. For example, to accommodate the three thousand persons who work directly on the Exchange floor requires 3,500 kilowatts of electricity, along with 8,000 phone circuits on the trading floor alone, and 200 miles of fiber-optic cable below ground.<ref name=twsJanO18a/>

{{Image|Charging Bull statue.jpg|thumb|left|The ''[[Charging Bull]]''.}}

==Personalities: players and deal-makers==
Persons associated with Wall Street have become famous. Although their reputations are usually limited to members of the [[stock broker]]age and banking communities, several have gained national and international fame. Some earned their fame for their investment strategies, financing, reporting, legal or regulatory skills, while others are remembered for their greed.<ref name="test">[http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/2009/1/2009_1_52.shtml John Steele Gordon] "Wall Street's 10 Most Notorious Stock Traders," ''American Heritage'', Spring 2009.</ref> One of the most iconic representations of the market prosperity is the ''[[Charging Bull]]'' sculpture, by [[Arturo Di Modica]]. Representing the [[bull market]] economy, the sculpture was originally placed in front of the [[New York Stock Exchange]], and subsequently moved to its current location in [[Bowling Green (New York City)|Bowling Green]].

<!--- Note to Wikipedians: The following paragraph (which was there before, ie, "Wall Street's culture is often criticized...") strikes me as POV-ish but I'll let others decide; I think we should ONLY keep it if we can find good references for these points. -- tomwsulcer --->
Wall Street's culture is often criticized as being rigid. This is a decades-old stereotype stemming from the Wall Street establishment's protection of its interests, and the link to the [[White Anglo-Saxon Protestant|WASP]] establishment. More recent criticism has centered on structural problems and lack of a desire to change well-established habits. Wall Street's establishment resists government oversight and regulation. At the same time, New York City has a reputation as a very bureaucratic city, which makes entry into the neighborhood difficult or even impossible for middle class entrepreneurs. The ethnic background of Wall Streeters remains largely unchanged since the days of the railway barons of the early 20th century, as documented by their portraits in the Wall+Broad chapter of The Corners Project<ref name="test">[http://www.thecornersproject.com The Corners Project], .</ref>

{{Image|Michael Bloomberg speech cropped.jpg|thumb|right|[[Michael Bloomberg]] was affiliated with [[Salomon Brothers]] before launching his own firm Bloomberg News and later becoming [[Mayor of New York City|mayor]].}}
Several well known Wall Street individuals include [[John Meriwether]], John Briggs, [[Michael Bloomberg]], and [[Warren Buffett]] (All affiliated at one time or another with the firm [[Salomon Brothers]]), as well as [[Bernie Madoff]], and numerous others.

Many talented financiers and bankers worked for Wasserstein Perella during the 1980s which was described in the ''[[New York Times]]'' as a training ground which helped create "a dynasty of bankers and executives that has spread throughout Wall Street and corporate America".<ref name=twsJanN113>{{cite news
|author= Andrew Ross Sorkin
|title= One of the Best Recruiters in the Neighborhood
|publisher= ''The New York Times: Business''
|date= April 27, 2007
|url= http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/business/27diaspora.html
|accessdate= 2010-01-14
}}</ref> They included Robert S. Wiesenthal who became chairman of [[Sony Corporation|Sony]]; Raymond J. McGuire of [[Citigroup]]; Douglas L. Braunstein of [[JPMorgan Chase]]; Deborah C. Wright of [[Carver Bancorp|Carver Federal Savings Bank]], Gail Zauder of [[Credit Suisse]]; and others.<ref name=twsJanN113/> A [[First Boston]] analyst [[Paul Mecurio]] left corporate life to become a [[comedian]].<ref name=twsJanN113/>

The now defunct investment bank of [[Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette]] had numerous talented people working there including people such as [[William Donaldson]] who served in the [[Nixon administration]], as well as [[Ken Moelis]], Bennett Goodman, Herald "Hal" Ritch, Joel Cohen, [[Safra A. Catz]] who became president of [[Oracle Corporation]], Tom Dean, Larry Schloss, Michael Connelly, and others.<ref name=twsJanN212>{{cite news
|author= Heidi N. Moore
|title= DLJ: Wall Street’s Incubator
|publisher= ''The Wall Street Journal''
|date= March 10, 2008
|url= http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2008/03/10/the-little-bank-that-was-wall-streets-incubator/
|accessdate= 2010-01-14
}}</ref>

==Wall Street as a financial center==
{{See|Financial District, Manhattan}}

===Wall Street in the New York economy===
Finance professor Charles R. Geisst wrote that the exchange has become "inextricably intertwined into New York's economy".<ref name=twsJanO35a/> Wall Street pay, in terms of salaries and bonuses and taxes, is an important part of the economy of [[New York, New York|New York City]], the [[Tri-State area (NY-NJ-CT)|tri-state metropolitan area]], and the [[Economy of the United States|United States]]. In 2008, after a downturn in the stock market, the decline meant $18 billion less in taxable income, with less money available for "apartments, furniture, cars, clothing and services".<ref name=twsJanN214>{{cite news
|author= Patrick McGeehan
|title= City and State Brace for Drop in Wall Street Pay
|publisher= ''The New York Times''
|date= July 26, 2008
|url= http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/26/nyregion/26pay.html
|accessdate= 2010-01-14
}}</ref> A falloff in Wall Street's economy could have "wrenching effects on the local and regional economies".<ref name=twsJanN214/>

Estimates vary about the number and quality of financial jobs in the city. One estimate was that Wall Street firms employed close to 200,000 persons in 2008.<ref name=twsJanN214/> Another estimate was that in 2007, the financial services industry which had a $70 billion profit became 22 percent of the city's revenue.<ref name=twsJanO23c>{{cite news
|author= Patrick McGeehan
|title= After Reversal of Fortunes, City Takes a New Look at Wall Street
|publisher= ''The New York Times''
|date= February 22, 2009
|url= http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/nyregion/23wall.html
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref> Another estimate (in 2006) was that the financial services industry makes up 9% of the city's work force and 31% of the tax base.<ref name=twsJanO46/> An additional estimate (2007) from Steve Malanga of the [[Manhattan Institute]] was that the securities industry accounts for 4.7 percent of the jobs in New York City but 20.7 percent of its wages, and he estimated there were 175,000 securities-industries jobs in New York (both Wall Street area and midtown) paying an average of $350,000 annually.<ref name=twsJanO53a/> Between 1995 and 2005, the sector grew at an annual rate of about 6.6% annually, a respectable rate, but that other financial centers were growing faster.<ref name=twsJanO53a/> Another estimate (2008) was that Wall Street provided a fourth of all personal income earned in the city, and 10% of New York City's tax revenue.<ref name=twsJan62O>{{cite news
|author= Patrick McGeehan
|title= As Financial Empires Shake, City Feels No. 2 on Its Heels
|publisher= ''The New York Times''
|date= September 12, 2008
|url= http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/13/nyregion/13rivalry.html
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref>

The seven largest Wall Street firms in the first decade of the 21st century were [[Bear Stearns]], [[JPMorgan Chase]], [[Citigroup Incorporated]], [[Goldman Sachs]], [[Morgan Stanley]], [[Merrill Lynch]] and [[Lehman Brothers]].<ref name=twsJanN214/> During the recession of 2008&ndash;2010, many of these firms went out of business or were bought up at firesale prices by other financial firms. In 2008, Lehman filed for bankruptcy,<ref name=twsJanO12a/> [[Bear Stearns]] was bought up by [[JP Morgan Chase]]<ref name=twsJanO12a/> with blessing by the U.S. government,<ref name=twsJanO37/> and [[Merrill Lynch]] was bought up by [[Bank of America]]. These failures marked a catastrophic downsizing of Wall Street as the financial industry goes through restructuring and change. Since New York's financial industry provides almost one-fourth of all income produced in the city, and accounts for 10% of the city's tax revenues and 20% of the state's, the downturn has had huge repercussions for government treasuries.<ref name=twsJanN214/> New York's mayor [[Michael Bloomberg]] reportedly over a four year period dangled over $100 million in tax incentives to persuade Goldman Sachs to build a 43-story headquarters in the financial district near the destroyed World Trade Center site.<ref name=twsJanO23e>{{cite news
|author= Patrick McGeehan
|title= After Reversal of Fortunes, City Takes a New Look at Wall Street
|publisher= ''The New York Times''
|date= February 22, 2009
|url= http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/nyregion/23wall.html
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref> In 2009, things looked somewhat gloomy, with one analysis by the [[Boston Consulting Group]] suggesting that 65,000 jobs had been permanently lost because of the downturn.<ref name=twsJanO23b>{{cite news
|author= Patrick McGeehan
|title= After Reversal of Fortunes, City Takes a New Look at Wall Street
|publisher= ''The New York Times''
|date= February 22, 2009
|url= http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/nyregion/23wall.html
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref> But there were signs that Manhattan property prices were rebounding with price rises of 9% annually in 2010, and bonuses were being paid once more, with average bonuses over $124,000 in 2010.<ref name=twsJanO12a/> The U.S. banking industry employes 1.86 million people and earned profits of $22 billion in the second quarter of 2010, up substantially from previous quarters.<ref name=twsJanO12a/>

===Wall Street versus Midtown Manhattan===
A requirement of the New York Stock Exchange was that brokerage firms had to have offices "clustered around Wall Street" so clerks could deliver physical paper copies of stock certificates each week.<ref name=twsJanN215a/> There were some indications that midtown had been becoming the locus of financial services dealings even by 1911.<ref name=twsJanN215xx>{{cite news
|title= WALL STREET BANKS CONNECTING UPTOWN; Financial District Notes This as American Exchange National Buys Into the Pacific.
|publisher= ''The New York Times''
|date= May 27, 1911
|url= http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9501EED81031E233A25754C2A9639C946096D6CF
|accessdate= 2010-01-14
}}</ref> But as technology progressed, in the middle and later decades of the 20th century, computers and telecommunications replaced paper notifications, meaning that the close proximity requirement could be bypassed in more situations.<ref name=twsJanN215a/> Many financial firms found that they could move to midtown Manhattan four miles away<ref name=twsJanN312a/> or elsewhere and still operate effectively. For example, the former investment firm of [[Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette]] was described as a ''Wall Street firm'' but had its headquarters on Park Avenue in midtown.<ref name=twsJanN212/> A report described the migration from Wall Street:

{{cquote|The financial industry has been slowly migrating from its historic home in the warren of streets around Wall Street to the more spacious and glamorous office towers of Midtown Manhattan. Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup, and Bear Stearns have all moved north. -- ''USA Today'', October 2001.<ref name=twsJanN215a/>}}

Nevertheless, a key magnet for the Wall Street remains the [[New York Stock Exchange]]. Some "old guard" firms such as [[Goldman Sachs]] and [[Merrill Lynch]] (bought by [[Bank of America]] in 2009), have remained "fiercely loyal to the financial district" location, and new ones such as [[Deutsche Bank]] have chosen office space in the district.<ref name=twsJanN215a/> So-called "face&ndash;to&ndash;face" trading between buyers and sellers remains a "cornerstone" of the NYSE, with a benefit of having all of a deal's players close at hand, including [[investment bankers]], [[lawyers]], and [[accountants]].<ref name=twsJanN215a/>

In 2011, the Manhattan [[Financial District (Manhattan)|Financial District]] is one of the largest business districts in the United States, and second in New York City only to [[Midtown Manhattan|Midtown]] in terms of dollar volume of business transacted.

===Wall Street as a neighborhood===
{{Image|Battery Park City 007.JPG|thumb|right|[[Battery Park City]] was a residential area built on reclaimed land along the [[Hudson River]] in lower Manhattan featuring jogging trails as well as residential apartments.}}
{{Image|Stuy HS sunny jeh.JPG|thumb|right|[[Stuyvesant High School]].}}
During most of the 20th century, Wall Street was a business community with practically only offices which emptied out at night. A report in the ''[[New York Times]]'' in 1961 described a "deathlike stillness that settles on the district after 5:30 and all day Saturday and Sunday."<ref name=twsJanN312a>{{cite news
|author= Aaron Donovan
|title= If You're Thinking of Living In/The Financial District; In Wall Street's Canyons, Cliff Dwellers
|publisher= ''The New York Times: Real Estate''
|date= September 9, 2001
|url= http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0DE2DA1339F93AA3575AC0A9679C8B63
|accessdate= 2010-01-14
}}</ref> But there has been a change towards greater residential use of the area, pushed forwards by technological changes and shifting market conditions. The general pattern is for several hundred thousand workers to commute into the area during the day, sometimes by sharing a [[Taxicabs of the United States|taxicab]]<ref name=twsJanN115>{{cite news
|author= Michael M. Grynbaum
|title= Stand That Blazed Cab-Sharing Path Has Etiquette All Its Own
|publisher= ''The New York Times''
|date= June 18, 2009
|url= http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/19/nyregion/19share.html
|accessdate= 2010-01-14
}}</ref> from other parts of the city as well as from [[New Jersey]] and [[Long Island]], and then leave at night. In 1970, only 833 people lived "south of Chambers Street"; by 1990; 13,782 people were residents with the addition of areas such as [[Battery Park City]]<ref name=twsJanN215a/> and [[Southbridge Towers]].<ref name=twsJanN211/> Battery Park City was built on 92 acres of landfill, and 3,000 people moved there beginning about 1982, but by 1986 there was evidence of more shops and stores and a park, along with plans for more residential development.<ref name=twsJanN313>{{cite news
|author= Michael deCourcy Hinds
|title= SHAPING A LANDFILL INTO A NEIGHBORHOOD
|publisher= ''The New York Times: Real Estate''
|date= March 23, 1986
|url= http://www.nytimes.com/1986/03/23/realestate/shaping-a-landfill-into-a-neighborhood.html?pagewanted=all
|accessdate= 2010-01-14
}}</ref>

According to one description in 1996, "The area dies at night ... It needs a neighborhood, a community."<ref name=twsJanN211/> During the past two decades there has been a shift towards greater residential living areas in the Wall Street area, with incentives from city authorities in some instances.<ref name=twsJanN215a/> Many empty office buildings have been converted to lofts and apartments; for example, the office building where [[Harry Sinclair]], the oil magnate involved with the [[Teapot Dome scandal]], was converted to a co-op in 1979.<ref name=twsJanN211>{{cite news
|author= Michael Cooper
|title= NEW YORKERS & CO.: The Ghosts of Teapot Dome;Fabled Wall Street Offices Are Now Apartments, but Do Not Yet a Neighborhood Make
|publisher= ''The New York Times''
|date= January 28, 1996
|url= http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9500EFDC1639F93BA15752C0A960958260
|accessdate= 2010-01-14
}}</ref> In 1996, a fifth of buildings and warehouses were empty, and many were converted to living areas.<ref name=twsJanN211/> Some conversions met with problems, such as aging gargoyles on building exteriors having to be expensively restored to meet with current building codes.<ref name=twsJanN211/> Residents in the area have sought to have a supermarket, a movie theater, a pharmacy, more schools, and a "good diner".<ref name=twsJanN211/> The discount retailer named ''Job Lot'' used to be located at the World Trade Center but moved to Church Street; merchants bought extra unsold items at steep prices and sold them as a discount to consumers and shoppers included "thrifty homemakers and browsing retirees" who "rubbed elbows with City Hall workers and Wall Street executives"; but the firm went bust in 1993.<ref name=twsJanN214>{{cite news
|author= Bruce Lambert
|title= NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: LOWER MANHATTAN; At Job Lot, the Final Bargain Days
|publisher= ''The New York Times''
|date= December 19, 1993
|url= http://www.nytimes.com/1993/12/19/nyregion/neighborhood-report-lower-manhattan-at-job-lot-the-final-bargain-days.html
|accessdate= 2010-01-14
}}</ref> There were reports that the number of residents increased by 60% during the 1990s to about 25,000<ref name=twsJanN215a/> although a second estimate (based on the 2000 census based on a different map) places the residential (nighttime and weekend) population in 2000 at 12,042.<ref name=twsJanN312a/> By 2001, there were several grocery stores, dry cleaners, and two grade schools and a top high school.<ref name=twsJanN215a/> There is a [[barber|barber shop]] across from the New York Stock Exchange which has been there a long time.<ref name=twsJanN114>{{cite news
|author= Simon Doolittle
|title= A Beer and a Haircut on Wall Street
|publisher= ''The New York Times''
|date= February 27, 2009
|url= http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/wall-street-barber-serves-up-trims-and-cold-drinks/
|accessdate= 2010-01-14
}}</ref> By 2001, there were more signs of dogwalkers at night and a 24-hour neighborhood, although the general pattern of crowds during the working hours and emptiness at night was still apparent.<ref name=twsJanN312a/> There were ten hotels and thirteen museums by 2001.<ref name="twsJanN312a"/> [[Stuyvesant High School]] moved to its present location near Battery Park City in 1992 and has been described as one of the nation's premier high schools with emphasis on [[science]] and [[mathematics]].<ref name=twsJanN312a/> In 2007, the French fashion retailer [[Hermès]] opened a store in the financial district to sell items such as a "$4,700 custom-made leather dressage saddle or a $47,000 limited edition alligator briefcase."<ref name=twsJanN314>{{cite news
|author= Claire Wilson
|title= Hermès Tempts the Men of Wall Street
|publisher= ''The New York Times: Real Estate''
|date= July 29, 2007
|url= http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/29/realestate/commercial/29sqft.html
|accessdate= 2010-01-14
}}</ref> Some streets have been designated as pedestrian&ndash;only with vehicular traffic prohibited at some times.<ref name=twsJanN314/> There are reports of panhandlers like elsewhere in the city.<ref name=twsJanN315>{{cite news
|author= Patty Stonesifer and Sandy Stonesifer
|title= Sister, Can You Spare a Dime? I don't give to my neighborhood panhandlers. Should I?
|publisher= ''Slate''
|date= Jan. 23, 2009
|url= http://www.slate.com/id/2209038/
|accessdate= 2010-01-14
}}</ref> By 2010, the residential population had increased to 24,400 residents<ref name=twsJanN414>{{cite news
|author= Sushil Cheema
|title= Financial District Rallies as Residential Area
|publisher= ''Wall Street Journal''
|date= MAY 29, 2010
|url= http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704596504575272403046111016.html
|accessdate= 2010-01-14
}}</ref> with crime statistics showing no murders in 2010.<ref name=twsJanN414bb>{{cite news
|author= Sushil Cheema
|title= Financial District Rallies as Residential Area
|publisher= ''Wall Street Journal''
|date= MAY 29, 2010
|url= http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704596504575272403046111016.html
|accessdate= 2010-01-14
}}</ref> The area is growing with luxury high-end apartments and upscale retailers.<ref name=twsJanO19a/>

===Wall Street as a tourist destination===
Tourists visiting New York City often include Wall Street sights on their itineraries. One report described lower Manhattan as "swarming with camera-carrying tourists".<ref name=twsJanO13a>{{cite news
|author= David M. Halbfinger
|title= New York's Financial District Is a Must-See Tourist Destination
|publisher= ''The New York Times''
|date= August 27, 1997
|url= http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C07E4DC1731F934A1575BC0A961958260
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref> Tour guides highlight places such as Trinity Church, the Federal Reserve gold vaults 80 feet below street level (worth $100 billion), and the NYSE.<ref name=twsJanO21>{{cite news
|author= LIsa W. Foderaro
|title= A Financial District Tour
|publisher= ''The New York Times''
|date= June 20, 1997
|url= http://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/20/nyregion/a-financial-district-tour.html
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref> A ''Scoundrels of Wall Street Tour'' is a walking historical tour which includes a museum visit and discussion of various financiers "who were adept at finding ways around finance laws or loopholes through them".<ref name=twsJanN413>{{cite news
|author= T.L. Chancellor
|title= Walking Tours of NYC
|publisher= ''USA Today: Travel''
|date= 2010-01-14
|url= http://traveltips.usatoday.com/walking-tours-nyc-11759.html
|accessdate= 2010-01-14
}}</ref> Occasionally artists make impromptu performances; for example, in 2010, a troupe of 22 dancers "contort their bodies and cram themselves into the nooks and crannies of the Financial District in ''Bodies in Urban Spaces''" choreographed by Willi Donner.<ref name=twsJanN511>{{cite news
|author= Aaron Rutkoff
|title= ‘Bodies in Urban Spaces’: Fitting In on Wall Street
|publisher= ''Wall Street Journal''
|date= September 27, 2010
|url= http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2010/09/27/bodies-in-urban-spaces-fitting-in-on-wall-street/
|accessdate= 2010-01-14
}}</ref> One chief attraction, the [[Federal Reserve Bank of New York|Federal Reserve Building]] in lower Manhattan, paid $750,000 to open a visitors' gallery in 1997.<ref name=twsJanO13b>{{cite news
|author= David M. Halbfinger
|title= New York's Financial District Is a Must-See Tourist Destination
|publisher= ''The New York Times''
|date= August 27, 1997
|url= http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C07E4DC1731F934A1575BC0A961958260
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref> The New York Stock Exchange and the American Stock Exchange also spent money in the late 1990s to upgrade facilities for visitors.<ref name=twsJanO13c>{{cite news
|author= David M. Halbfinger
|title= New York's Financial District Is a Must-See Tourist Destination
|publisher= ''The New York Times''
|date= August 27, 1997
|url= http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C07E4DC1731F934A1575BC0A961958260
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref> Attractions include the [[gold]] vault beneath the Federal Reserve and that "staring down at the trading floor was as exciting as going to the [[Statue of Liberty]]."<ref name=twsJanO13c/>

=== Wall Street versus Main Street ===
[[Image:Wall Street & Broadway.JPG|thumb|right|Not just a [[metonym]], Wall Street has a sign post.]]
[[Image:Wall Street & Broadway.JPG|thumb|right|Not just a [[metonym]], Wall Street has a sign post.]]
As a figure of speech contrasted to "[[Main Street]]", the term "Wall Street" can refer to big business interests against those of small business and the working of middle class. It is sometimes used more specifically to refer to research analysts, shareholders, and financial institutions such as investment banks. Whereas "Main Street" conjures up images of locally owned businesses and banks, the phrase "Wall Street" is commonly used interchangeably with the phrase "[[Corporate America]]". It is also sometimes used in contrast to distinguish between the interests, culture, and lifestyles of investment banks and those of [[Fortune 500]] industrial or service corporations.
As a figure of speech contrasted to "[[Main Street]]", the term "Wall Street" can refer to big business interests against those of small business and the working of middle class. It is sometimes used more specifically to refer to research analysts, shareholders, and financial institutions such as investment banks. Whereas "Main Street" conjures up images of locally owned businesses and banks, the phrase "Wall Street" is commonly used interchangeably with the phrase "[[Corporate America]]". It is also sometimes used in contrast to distinguish between the interests, culture, and lifestyles of investment banks and those of [[Fortune 500]] industrial or service corporations.


===Wall Street in the public imagination===
===Perceptions===
[[Image:Trinity Church NYC 004b.JPG|thumb|left|[[Trinity Church (New York City)|Trinity church]] from Wall Street.]]
[[Image:Trinity Church NYC 004b.JPG|thumb|left|[[Trinity Church (New York City)|Trinity church]] from Wall Street.]]
Wall Street in a conceptual sense represents financial and economic power. To Americans, it can sometimes represent elitism and power politics, and its role has been a source of controversy throughout the nation's history, particularly beginning around the [[Gilded Age]] period in the late 19th century. Wall Street became the symbol of a country and economic system that many Americans see as having developed through trade, capitalism, and innovation.<ref>Fraser (2005).</ref>


Wall Street has become synonymous with financial interests, often used negatively.<ref name=twsJanN112>{{cite news
The older skyscrapers often were built with elaborate facades; such elaborate aesthetics haven't been common in corporate architecture for decades. The [[World Trade Center]], built in the 1970s, was very plain and utilitarian in comparison (the [[World Trade Center|Twin Towers]] were often criticized as looking like two big boxes, despite their impressive height).
|author= Robert Kuttner
|title= Zillions for Wall Street, Zippo for Barack's Old Neighborhood
|publisher= ''Huffington Post''
|date= August 22, 2010
|url= http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-kuttner/zillions-for-wall-street-_b_690541.html
|accessdate= 2010-01-14
}}</ref> During the [[Subprime mortgage crisis|mortgage mess]] from 2007&ndash;2010, Wall Street financing was blamed as one of the causes, although most commentators blame an interplay of factors. The U.S. government with the [[Troubled Asset Relief Program]] bailed out the banks and financial backers with billions of dollars, but the bailout was often criticized as politically motivated,<ref name=twsJanN112/> and was criticized by journalists as well as the public. Analyst [[Robert Kuttner]] in the ''[[Huffington Post]]'' criticized the bailout as helping large Wall Street firms such as Citigroup while neglecting to help smaller community development banks such as Chicago's [[ShoreBank]].<ref name=twsJanN112/> One writer in the ''Huffington Post'' looked at FBI statistics on robbery, fraud, and crime and concluded that Wall Street was the "most dangerous neighborhood in the United States" if one factored in the $50 billion [[fraud]] perpetrated by [[Bernie Madoff]].<ref name=twsJanN213>{{cite news
|author= B. Jeffrey Madoff
|title= The Most Dangerous Neighborhood in the United States
|publisher= ''Huffington Post''
|date= March 10, 2009
|url= http://www.huffingtonpost.com/b-jeffrey-madoff/the-most-dangerous-neighb_b_173667.html
|accessdate= 2010-01-14
}}</ref> When large firms such as [[Enron]], [[WorldCom]] and [[Global Crossing]] were found guilty of fraud, Wall Street was often blamed,<ref name=twsJanO15a/> even though these firms had headquarters around the nation and not in Wall Street. Many complained that the resulting [[Sarbanes-Oxley]] legislation dampened the business climate with regulations that were "overly burdensome."<ref name=twsJanO54/> Interest groups seeking favor with [[Washington, D.C.|Washington lawmakers]], such as car dealers, have often sought to portray their interests as allied with ''Main Street'' rather than ''Wall Street'', although analyst Peter Overby on ''[[National Public Radio]]'' suggested that car dealers have written over $250 billion in consumer loans and have real ties with ''Wall Street''.<ref name=twsJanN411>{{cite news
|author= Peter Overby
|title= Car Dealers May Escape Scrutiny Of Consumer Loans
|publisher= ''NPR''
|date= June 24, 2010
|url= http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128068332
|accessdate= 2010-01-14
}}</ref> When the [[United States Treasury]] bailed out large financial firms, to ostensibly halt a downward spiral in the nation's economy, there was tremendous negative political fallout, particularly when reports came out that monies supposed to be used to ease credit restrictions were being used to pay bonuses to highly-paid employees.<ref name=twsJanN313>{{cite news
|title= Hard Times, But Big Wall Street Bonuses
|publisher= ''CBS News''
|date= Nov. 12, 2008
|url= http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/12/earlyshow/main4595179.shtml
|accessdate= 2010-01-14
}}</ref> Analyst William D. Cohan argued that it was "obscene" how Wall Street reaped "massive profits and bonuses in 2009" after being saved by "trillions of dollars of American taxpayers' treasure" despite Wall Street's "greed and irresponsible risk-taking."<ref name=twsJanO43>{{cite news
|author= William D. Cohan
|title= You’re Welcome, Wall Street
|publisher= ''The New York Times''
|date= April 19, 2010
|url= http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/19/youre-welcome-wall-street/
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref> ''[[Washington Post]]'' reporter Suzanne McGee called for Wall Street to make a sort of public apology to the nation, and expressed dismay that people such as Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein hadn't expressed contrition despite being sued by the [[Securities and Exchange Commission|SEC]] in 2009.<ref name=twsJanO26>{{cite news
|author= Suzanne McGee
|title= Will Wall Street ever apologize?
|publisher= ''Washington Post''
|date= June 30, 2010
|url= http://views.washingtonpost.com/leadership/guestinsights/2010/06/wall-street-and-the-noble-art-of-the-apology.html
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref> McGee wrote that "Bankers aren't the sole culprits, but their too-glib denials of responsibility and the occasional vague and waffling expression of regret don't go far enough to deflect anger."<ref name=twsJanO26/>


{{Image|GoldmanSachsHeadquarters.JPG|thumb|right|Goldman Sachs building in the Wall Street area in 2010.}}
Wall Street, more than anything, represents financial and economic power. To Americans, Wall Street can sometimes represent elitism and power politics. Wall Street became the symbol of a country and economic system that many Americans see as having developed through trade, capitalism, and innovation.<ref>Fraser (2005).</ref>
But chief banking analyst at [[Goldman Sachs]], Richard Ramsden, is "unapologetic" and sees "banks as the dynamos that power the rest of the economy."<ref name=twsJanO12a/> Ramsden believes "risk-taking is vital" and said in 2010:


{{cquote|You can construct a banking system in which no bank will ever fail, in which there's no leverage. But there would be a cost. There would be virtually no economic growth because there would be no credit creation. -- Richard Ramsden of Goldman Sachs, 2010.<ref name=twsJanO12a/>}}
===In popular culture===

Others in the financial industry believe they've been unfairly castigated by the public and by politicians. For example, Anthony Scaramucci reportedly told President [[Barack Obama]] in 2010 that he felt like a [[piñata]], "whacked with a stick" by "hostile politicians".<ref name=twsJanO12a/>

The financial misdeeds of various figures throughout American history sometimes casts a dark shadow on financial investing as a whole, and include names such as [[William Duer (Continental Congressman)|William Duer]], [[James Fisk (financier)|Jim Fisk]] and [[Jay Gould]] (the latter two believed to have been involved with an effort to collapse the U.S. gold market in 1869) as well as modern figures such as [[Bernard Madoff]] who "bilked billions from investors".<ref name=twsJanN413/>

In addition, images of Wall Street and its figures have loomed large. The 1987 [[Oliver Stone]] film ''[[Wall Street (1987 film)|Wall Street]]'' created the iconic figure of [[Gordon Gekko]] who used the phrase "greed is good", which caught on in the cultural parlance.<ref name=twsJanN514/> According to one account, the Gekko character was a "straight lift" from the real world junk-bond dealer [[Michael Milkin]],<ref name=twsJanO15a/> who later pled guilty to felony charges for violating securities laws. Stone commented in 2009 how the movie had had an unexpected cultural influence, not causing them to turn away from corporate greed, but causing many young people to choose Wall Street careers because of that movie.<ref name=twsJanN514>{{cite news
|author= Tim Arango
|title= Greed Is Bad, Gekko. So Is a Meltdown.
|publisher= ''The New York Times: Movies''
|date= September 7, 2009
|url= http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/08/movies/08stone.html
|accessdate= 2010-01-14
}}</ref> A reporter repeated other lines from the film:

{{cquote|I’m talking about liquid. Rich enough to have your own jet. Rich enough not to waste time. Fifty, a hundred million dollars, Buddy. A player. -- lines from the script of ''[[Wall Street (1987 film)|Wall Street]]''<ref name=twsJanN514/>}}

Wall Street firms have however also contributed to projects such as [[Habitat for Humanity]] as well as done food programs in [[Haiti]] and trauma centers in [[Sudan]] and rescue boats during floods in [[Bangladesh]].<ref name=twsJanN111>{{cite news
|author= Emily Wax
|title= Wall Street Greed? Not in This Neighborhood
|publisher= ''Washington Post''
|date= October 11, 2008
|url= http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/10/AR2008101002937.html
|accessdate= 2010-01-14
}}</ref>

===Wall Street in popular culture===
* [[Herman Melville]]'s classic short story ''[[Bartleby, the Scrivener]]'' is subtitled ''A Story of Wall Street'' and provides an excellent portrayal of a kind and wealthy lawyer's struggle to reason with that which is unreasonable as he is pushed beyond his comfort zone to "feel" something real for humanity.
* [[Herman Melville]]'s classic short story ''[[Bartleby, the Scrivener]]'' is subtitled ''A Story of Wall Street'' and provides an excellent portrayal of a kind and wealthy lawyer's struggle to reason with that which is unreasonable as he is pushed beyond his comfort zone to "feel" something real for humanity.
* In [[William Faulkner]]'s novel ''[[The Sound and the Fury]]'', Jason Compson hits on other perceptions of Wall Street: after finding some of his stocks are doing poorly, he blames "the Jews."
* In [[William Faulkner]]'s novel ''[[The Sound and the Fury]]'', Jason Compson hits on other perceptions of Wall Street: after finding some of his stocks are doing poorly, he blames "the Jews."
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* In the film [[National Treasure (film)|National Treasure]] a clue to finding the Templar Treasure leads the main characters to Wall Street's [[Trinity Church, New York|Trinity Church]].
* In the film [[National Treasure (film)|National Treasure]] a clue to finding the Templar Treasure leads the main characters to Wall Street's [[Trinity Church, New York|Trinity Church]].
* TNA Wrestler [[Robert Roode]] is billed from "Wall Street in Manhattan, New York."
* TNA Wrestler [[Robert Roode]] is billed from "Wall Street in Manhattan, New York."
* [[Bret Easton Ellis]]'s novel ''[[American Psycho]]'' follows the day-to-day life of Wall Street investment banker and [[serial killer]] Patrick Bateman.
* [[Bret Easton Ellis]]'s novel ''[[American Psycho]]'' follows the day-to-day life of Wall Street [[investment banker]] and [[serial killer]] Patrick Bateman.
* In the video game [[Grand Theft Auto IV]] in the fictional [[Liberty City]] Wall Street is a district dubbed ''The Exchange''.
* In the video game [[Grand Theft Auto IV]] in the fictional [[Liberty City (Grand Theft Auto)|Liberty City]] Wall Street is a district dubbed ''The Exchange''.

==Competitors to Wall Street==
During much of the 20th century, the United States and its financial capital of [[New York, New York|New York City]] were the leaders. But over the past few decades, with the rise of a multipolar world with new regional powers and global capitalism, numerous financial centers have challenged Wall Street's predominance, particularly from [[Asia]] which some analysts believe will be the focus of new worldwide growth.<ref name=twsJanO33>{{cite news
|author= Nisha Gopalan
|title= Stock Brokers Flock to Asia in Search of Growth
|publisher= ''Wall Street Journal''
|date= November 29, 2010
|url= http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2010/11/29/stock-brokers-flock-to-asia-in-search-of-growth/
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref> New York still has strengths in having a "concentration of finance professionals" -- prime brokers, large banks, traders, lawyers, accountants, and private bankers.<ref name=twsJanO53a/> One analyst suggested the prime factors for success as a financial city were three:

# a pool of money to lend or invest
# a decent legal framework
# high-quality human resources<ref name=twsJanO54>{{cite news
|author= Daniel Altman
|title= Other financial centers could rise amid crisis
|publisher= ''The New York Times: Business''
|date= September 30, 2008
|url= http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/30/business/worldbusiness/30iht-glob01.1.16579561.html
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref>

* '''London'''. Reports suggest that the [[City of London]] has overtaken New York as a financial capital<ref name=twsJanO23a>{{cite news
|author= Patrick McGeehan
|title= After Reversal of Fortunes, City Takes a New Look at Wall Street
|publisher= ''The New York Times''
|date= February 22, 2009
|url= http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/nyregion/23wall.html
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref> with better regulation. London's merger volume was higher than New York's by $79 billion in 2005 and equity issuance was $130 billion versus $105 billion in the United States.<ref name=twsJanN212/> Companies seeking to list their stocks have started going to London before New York.<ref name=twsJanO46>{{cite news
|author= Heather Timmons
|title= New York Isn’t the World’s Undisputed Financial Capital
|publisher= ''The New York Times''
|date= October 27, 2006
|url= http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/27/business/worldbusiness/27london.html
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref> There is a perception that "regulatory scrutiny is more burdensome in the United States than in London"<ref name=twsJanO53a/><ref name=twsJanO46/> and which has a "transparent and reliable legal system."<ref name=twsJanO55>{{cite news
|author= Beth Gardiner
|title= The London Banking Center Is Beginning to Feel Like Itself Again
|publisher= ''The New York Times: Global Business''
|date= January 20, 2010
|url= http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/business/global/21rglofinuk.html
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref> One report was that London's location between Asia and the U.S. meant that it was often suitable in terms of time zones.<ref name=twsJanO55/> With multinationals sending their employees there; one estimate was there were 224,000 Americans in Britain in 2008.<ref name=twsJanO61>{{cite news
|author= Julia Werdigier
|title= Paychecks and Passports
|publisher= ''The New York Times: Business''
|date= April 2, 2008
|url= http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/02/business/02EXPAT.html
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref>

{{Image|0352 20090626 Shanghai.jpg|thumb|right|Skyscrapers in [[Shanghai]] in [[China]] in 2009.}}
* '''Shanghai'''. Official efforts have been directed to making [[Pudong]] a financial leader by 2010.<ref name=twsJanO56>{{cite news
|author= Seth Faison
|title= Hong Kong Continues to Eclipse An Economic Rebirth in Shanghai
|publisher= ''The New York Times: Business Day''
|date= ecember 13, 1996
|url= http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B02E6DC143EF930A25751C1A960958260
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref> Efforts during the 1990s were mixed, but in the early 21st century, Shanghai gained ground. Factors such as a "protective banking sector" and a "highly restricted capital market" have held the city back, according to one analysis in 2009 in ''[[China Daily]]''.<ref name=twsJanO51>{{cite news
|author= Hong Liang
|title= Software for a financial center here
|publisher= ''China Daily''
|date= 2009-05-04
|url= http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2009-05/04/content_7740527.htm
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref> Shanghai has done well in terms of market capitalization but it needs to "attract an army of money managers, lawyers, accountants, actuaries, brokers and other professionals, Chinese and foreign," to enable it to compete with New York and London.<ref name=twsJanO52>{{cite news
|author= Dealbook
|title= Shanghai Opens Doors to Financial World
|publisher= ''The New York Times''
|date= March 2, 2010
|url= http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/shanghai-opens-doors-to-financial-world/
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref> China is generating tremendous new capital, which makes it easier to stage initial public offerings of state-owned companies in places like Shanghai.<ref name=twsJanO53a/>

* '''Hong Kong'''. In 2010, the [[Hong Kong Stock Exchange]] raised nearly $53 billion for [[initial public offering]]s, compared with only $42 billion for the U.S. and $16 billion (£10 billion) in London.<ref name=twsJanO46/><ref name=twsJanO45>{{cite news
|author= Cathy Holcombe
|title= Hong Kong and the Goldilocks Regulator
|publisher= ''Wall Street Journal''
|date= ANUARY 14, 2011
|url= http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703583404576079372306133508.html
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref> Hong Kong was the site of the world's largest I.P.O. in 2006 of the $19.1 billion Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.<ref name=twsJanO53a/> Hedge funds are doing well in Hong Kong with increased growth from 2006 to 2010.<ref name=twsJanO45/> One estimate in 2009 was that the Hong Kong stock market was the world's seventh largest and noted that 70 percent of the world's 100 largest banks were based in the city.<ref name=twsJanO63>{{cite news
|author= (Xinhua)
|title= HK, Shenzhen promote financial industry in NY
|publisher= ''China Daily''
|date= 2009-06-02
|url= http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-06/02/content_7964085.htm
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref>

* '''Tokyo'''. One report suggests that Japanese authorities are working on plans to transform Tokyo but have met with mixed success, noting that "initial drafts suggest that Japan’s economic specialists are having trouble figuring out the secret of the Western financial centers’ success."<ref name=twsJanO11>{{cite news
|author= Martin Fackler
|title= Tokyo Seeking a Top Niche in Global Finance
|publisher= ''The New York Times: World Business''
|date= November 16, 2007
|url= http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/16/business/worldbusiness/16capital.html
|accessdate= 2011-01-15
}}</ref> Efforts include more English-speaking restaurants and services and earthquake-resistant offices, but that have neglected more powerful stimuli such as lower taxes and a deep-seated aversion to [[finance]].<ref name=twsJanO11/>

* '''Singapore'''. This city was mentioned as a competitor given its proximity to Asian markets.<ref name=twsJanO55/>

* '''Chicago'''. The Illinois city has the "world’s largest derivatives market" when the [[Chicago Mercantile Exchange]] and the [[Chicago Board of Trade]] merged in 2007.<ref name=twsJanO46/>

* '''Dubai'''. This city has been mentioned as a competitor as well.<ref name=twsJanO53a/>

* '''Others'''. Cities such as [[São Paulo]] and [[Johannesburg]] and other "would-be hubs" lack liquidity and the "skills base," according to one source.<ref name=twsJanO54/> Financial industries in countries such as [[India]], [[Korea]] and [[Malaysia]] require not only well-trained people but the "whole institutional infrastructure of laws, regulations, contracts, trust and disclosure" which takes time to happen.<ref name=twsJanO54/>

''[[New York Times]]'' analyst Daniel Gross wrote:

{{cquote|In today’s burgeoning and increasingly integrated global financial markets — a vast, neural spaghetti of wires, Web sites and trading platforms — the N.Y.S.E. is clearly no longer the epicenter. Nor is New York. The largest mutual-fund complexes are in [[Valley Forge, Pennsylvania|Valley Forge, Pa.]], Los Angeles and Boston, while trading and money management are spreading globally. Since the end of the cold war, vast pools of capital have been forming overseas, in the Swiss bank accounts of Russian oligarchs, in the Shanghai vaults of Chinese manufacturing magnates and in the coffers of funds controlled by governments in [[Singapore]], [[Russia]], [[Dubai]], [[Qatar]] and [[Saudi Arabia]] that may amount to some $2.5 trillion. -- Daniel Gross in 2007<ref name=twsJanO53a/>}}

An example is the alternative trading platform known as ''BATS'' based in [[Kansas City, Missouri|Kansas City]] which came "out of nowhere to gain a 9 percent share in the market for trading United States stocks."<ref name=twsJanO53a/> The firm has computers in [[New Jersey]], two salespersons in New York City, but the remaining 33 employees work in a center in Missouri.<ref name=twsJanO53a/>


==Transportation==
==Transportation==
[[Image:Pier11ferry.JPG|thumb|Pier 11]]
[[Image:Pier11ferry.JPG|thumb|Pier 11]]
Because Wall Street was historically a commuter destination, it has seen much transportation infrastructure developed with it in mind. Today, Pier 11 at the foot of the street is a busy ferry terminal, and the [[New York City subway]] has three stations under Wall Street itself:
Wall Street being historically a commuter destination, much transportation infrastructure has been developed to serve it. Today, Pier 11 at the foot of the street is a busy terminal for [[New York Waterway]] and other ferries. The [[New York City subway]] has three stations under Wall Street:
* [[Wall Street (IRT Broadway-Seventh Avenue Line)]] at Wall Street & [[William Street (Manhattan)|William Street]]
* [[Wall Street (IRT Broadway-Seventh Avenue Line)]] at Wall Street & [[William Street (Manhattan)|William Street]]
* [[Wall Street (IRT Lexington Avenue Line)]] at Wall Street & [[Broadway (Manhattan)|Broadway]]
* [[Wall Street (IRT Lexington Avenue Line)]] at Wall Street & [[Broadway (Manhattan)|Broadway]]
* [[Broad Street (BMT Nassau Street Line)]] at Wall Street & [[Broad Street (Manhattan)|Broad Street]]
* [[Broad Street (BMT Nassau Street Line)]] at Wall Street & [[Broad Street (Manhattan)|Broad Street]]
Motor traffic, particularly during working hours, is often [[traffic congestion|congested]] but driving late at night and on weekends can be easier. The roads are not arranged according to midtown's distinctive rectangular grid pattern with [[Green wave|staggered lights]], but have small often one-lane roads with numerous stoplights and stop signs. [[Franklin D. Roosevelt East River Drive|A highway]] runs along the East River and the [[Downtown Manhattan Heliport]] serves Wall Street.

==Films shot in Manhattan==
* 1950: [[Side Street (1950 film)|Side Street]] directed by [[Anthony Mann]] (entirely shot on location)
* 1996: [[The Associate]] starring [[Whoopi Goldberg]] (shot almost entirely on Wall Street)


==See also==
==See also==
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* [[List of financial districts]]
* [[List of financial districts]]


==Notes==
==References==
{{Reflist|colwidth=30em}}
{{Reflist|colwidth=30em}}


==References==
==Further reading==
* Atwood, Albert W. and Erickson, Erling A. "Morgan, John Pierpont, (Apr. 17, 1837 – March 31, 1913)," in ''Dictionary of American Biography, Volume 7'' (1934)
* Atwood, Albert W. and Erickson, Erling A. "Morgan, John Pierpont, (Apr. 17, 1837 – March 31, 1913)," in ''Dictionary of American Biography, Volume 7'' (1934)
* Carosso, Vincent P. ''The Morgans: Private International Bankers, 1854–1913.'' Harvard U. Press, 1987. 888 pp.&nbsp;ISBN 978-0-674-58729-8
* Carosso, Vincent P. ''The Morgans: Private International Bankers, 1854–1913.'' Harvard U. Press, 1987. 888 pp.&nbsp;ISBN 978-0-674-58729-8
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* Chernow, Ron. ''The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance'', (2001) ISBN 0-8021-3829-2
* Chernow, Ron. ''The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance'', (2001) ISBN 0-8021-3829-2
* Fraser, Steve. ''Every Man a Speculator: A History of Wall Street in American Life'' HarperCollins (2005)
* Fraser, Steve. ''Every Man a Speculator: A History of Wall Street in American Life'' HarperCollins (2005)
* Geisst; Charles R. ''Wall Street: A History from Its Beginnings to the Fall of Enron.'' Oxford University Press. 2004. [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=104746636 online edition]
* Geisst, Charles R. ''Wall Street: A History from Its Beginnings to the Fall of Enron.'' Oxford University Press. 2004. [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=104746636 online edition]
* John Moody; ''The Masters of Capital: A Chronicle of Wall Street'' Yale University Press, (1921) [http://www.archive.org/details/mastersofcapitaljohn00moodiala online edition]
* Moody, John. ''The Masters of Capital: A Chronicle of Wall Street'' Yale University Press, (1921) [http://www.archive.org/details/mastersofcapitaljohn00moodiala online edition]
* Morris, Charles R. ''The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy'' (2005) ISBN 978-0-8050-8134-3
* Morris, Charles R. ''The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy'' (2005) ISBN 978-0-8050-8134-3
* Perkins, Edwin J. ''Wall Street to Main Street: Charles Merrill and Middle-class Investors'' (1999)
* Perkins, Edwin J. ''Wall Street to Main Street: Charles Merrill and Middle-class Investors'' (1999)
* [[Robert Sobel]] ''The Big Board: A History of the New York Stock Market'' (1962)
* [[Robert Sobel|Sobel, Robert]]. ''The Big Board: A History of the New York Stock Market'' (1962)
* [[Robert Sobel]] ''The Great Bull Market: Wall Street in the 1920s'' (1968)
* Sobel, Robert. ''The Great Bull Market: Wall Street in the 1920s'' (1968)
* [[Robert Sobel]] ''Inside Wall Street: Continuity & Change in the Financial District'' (1977)
* Sobel, Robert. ''Inside Wall Street: Continuity & Change in the Financial District'' (1977)
* Strouse, Jean. ''Morgan: American Financier.'' Random House, 1999. 796 pp.&nbsp;ISBN 978-0-679-46275-0
* Strouse, Jean. ''Morgan: American Financier.'' Random House, 1999. 796 pp.&nbsp;ISBN 978-0-679-46275-0


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{{United States topics}}
{{United States topics}}



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Revision as of 05:27, 30 May 2011

Wall Street
West endBroadway in Manhattan
East endSouth Street in Manhattan
The New York Stock Exchange as seen from Wall Street
Map of Wall Street as it runs today
The original city map called the Castello Plan from 1660, showing the wall on the right side
Depiction of the wall of New Amsterdam on a tile in Wall Street (IRT Lexington Avenue Line) subway station

Template:Image

Conjectural view of Wall Street, as it probably looked at the time of Washington's 1789 inauguration

Template:Image

View of Wall Street from corner of Broad Street, 1867: The building on the left was the U.S. Customs House. Today it's the home of the Federal Hall National Memorial.

Template:Image

Wall Street refers to the financial district of New York City,[1] named after and centered on the eight-block-long street running from Broadway to South Street on the East River in lower Manhattan. Over time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, or signifying New York-based financial interests.[2] It is the home of the New York Stock Exchange, the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed companies.[3] Several other major exchanges have or had headquarters in the Wall Street area, including NASDAQ, the New York Mercantile Exchange, the New York Board of Trade, and the former American Stock Exchange. Anchored by Wall Street, New York City is the principal financial centers of the world.[4][5][6][7][8][9][10]

File:Depression-stock-market-crash-1929.jpg
Wall Street in the stock market crash of 1929

History

Early years

Lower Manhattan was the first area in the city to be settled by Europeans, in 1623, according to one account.[11] Dutch settlers had houses, farms, and a few stores in this growing New World port. One Dutch farmer named Annotkje Janz had a farm in lower Manhattan and is buried in Trinity Church,[12] and the last Dutch mayor Peter Stuyvesant ran New Amsterdam until 1664, when it was ceded to Britain and had its name changed to New York.[13]

There are varying accounts about how the Dutch-named "de Waal Straat"[14] got its name. A generally accepted version is that the name of the street name was derived from an earthen wall on the northern boundary of the New Amsterdam settlement, perhaps to protect against English colonial encroachment or incursions by native Americans. A conflicting explanation is that Wall Street was named after Walloons -- possibly a Dutch abbreviation for Walloon being Waal.[15] Among the first settlers that embarked on the ship "Nieu Nederlandt" in 1624 were 30 Walloon families.

In the 1640s, basic picket and plank fences denoted plots and residences in the colony.[16] Later, on behalf of the Dutch West India Company, Peter Stuyvesant, using both African slaves[17] and white colonists, collaborated with the city government in the construction of a stronger stockade. A strengthened 12-foot (4 m) wall[18] against attack from various Native American tribes. In 1685 surveyors laid out Wall Street along the lines of the original stockade.[18] The wall started at Pearl Street, which was the shoreline at that time, crossing the Indian path Broadway and ending at the other shoreline (today's Trinity Place), where it took a turn south and ran along the shore until it ended at the old fort. In these early days, local merchants and traders would gather at disparate spots to buy and sell shares and bonds, and over time divided themselves into two classes—auctioneers and dealers.[19]

In the late 18th century, there was a buttonwood tree at the foot of Wall Street under which traders and speculators would gather to trade securities.[20] The benefit was being in close proximity to each other.[20] In 1792, traders formalized their association with the Buttonwood Agreement which was the origin of the New York Stock Exchange.[21] The idea of the agreement was to make the market more "structured" and "without the manipulative auctions", with a commission structure.[19] Persons signing the agreement agreed to charge each other a standard commission rate; persons not signing could still participate but would be charged a higher commission for dealing.[19]

In 1789, Wall Street was the scene of the United States' first presidential inauguration when George Washington took the oath of office on the balcony of Federal Hall on April 30, 1789. This was also the location of the passing of the Bill Of Rights. In the cemetery of Trinity Church, Alexander Hamilton, who was the first Treasury secretary and "architect of the early United States financial system," is buried.[22]

Nineteenth century

In the first few decades, both residences and businesses occupied the area, but increasingly business predominated. "There are old stories of people's houses being surrounded by the clamor of business and trade and the owners complaining that they can't get anything done," according to a historian named Burrows.[11] The opening of the Erie Canal in the early 19th century meant a huge boom in business for New York City, since it was the only major eastern seaport which had direct access by inland waterways to ports on the Great Lakes. Wall Street became the "money capital of America".[20]

Historian Charles R. Geisst suggested that there has constantly been a "tug-of-war" between business interests on Wall Street and authorities in Washington, D.C..[19] Generally during the 19th century Wall Street developed its own "unique personality and institutions" with little outside interference.[19]

In the 1840s and 1850s, most residents moved north to midtown because of the increased business use at the lower tip of the island.[11] The Civil War had the effect of causing the northern economy to boom, bringing greater prosperity to cities like New York which "came into its own as the nation's banking center" connecting "Old World capital and New World ambition", according to one account.[22] J. P. Morgan created giant trusts; John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil moved to New York.[22] Between 1860 and 1920, the economy changed from "agricultural to industrial to financial" and New York maintained its leadership position despite these changes, according to historian Thomas Kessner.[22] New York was second only to London as the world's financial capital.[22]

In 1884, Charles H. Dow began tracking stocks, initially beginning with 11 stocks, mostly railroads, and looked at average prices for these eleven.[23] When the average "peaks and troughs" went up consistently, he deemed it a bull market condition; if averages dropped, it was a bear market.[23] He added up prices, and divided by the number of stocks to get his Dow Jones average. Dow's numbers were a "convenient benchmark" for analyzing the market and became an accepted way to look at the entire stock market.[23]

In 1889, the original stock report, Customers' Afternoon Letter, became The Wall Street Journal. Named in reference to the actual street, it became an influential international daily business newspaper published in New York City.[24] After October 7, 1896, it began publishing Dow's expanded list of stocks.[23] A century later, there were 30 stocks in the average.

Twentieth century

Historian John Brooks in his book Once in Golconda considered the turn of the 20th century period to have been Wall Street's heyday.[22] The address of 23 Wall Street where the headquarters of J. P. Morgan & Company, known as The Corner, was "the precise center, geographical as well as metaphorical, of financial America and even of the financial world."[22]

Wall Street has had changing relationships with government authorities. In 1913, for example, when authorities proposed a $4 tax on stock transfers, stock clerks protested.[25] At other times, city and state officials have taken steps through tax incentives to encourage financial firms to continue to do business in the city.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the corporate culture of New York was a primary center for the construction of skyscrapers, and was rivaled only by Chicago on the American continent. There were also residential sections, such as the Bowling Green section between Broadway and the Hudson river, and between Vesey Street and the Battery. The Bowling Green area was described as "Wall Street's back yard" with poor people, high infant mortality rates, and the "worst housing conditions in the city."[26] As a result of the construction, looking at New York City from the east, one can see two distinct clumps of tall buildings—the financial district on the left, and the taller midtown district on the right. The geology of Manhattan is well-suited for tall buildings, with a solid mass of bedrock underneath Manhattan providing a firm foundation for tall buildings. Skyscrapers are expensive to build, but when there is a "short supply of land" in a "desirable location", then building upwards makes sound financial sense.[27] A post office was built at 60 Wall Street in 1905.[28] During the World War I years, occasionally there were fund-raising efforts for projects such as the National Guard.[29]

On September 16, 1920, close to the corner of Wall and Broad Street, the busiest corner of the financial district and across the offices of the Morgan Bank, a powerful bomb exploded. It killed 38 and seriously injured 143 people.[30] The perpetrators were never identified or apprehended. The explosion did, however, help fuel the Red Scare that was underway at the time. A report from the New York Times:

The tomb-like silence that settles over Wall Street and lower Broadway with the coming of night and the suspension of business was entirely changed last night as hundreds of men worked under the glare of searchlights to repair the damage to skyscrapers that were lighted up from top to bottom. ... The Assay Office, nearest the point of explosion, naturally suffered the most. The front was pierced in fifty places where the cast iron slugs, which were of the material used for window weights, were thrown against it. Each slug penetrated the stone an inch or two and chipped off pieces ranging from three inches to a foot in diameter. The ornamental iron grill work protecting each window was broken or shattered. ... the Assay Office was a wreck. ... It was as though some gigantic force had overturned the building and then placed it upright again, leaving the framework uninjured but scrambling everything inside. -- 1920[31]

The area was subjected to numerous threats; one bomb threat in 1921 led to detectives sealing off the area to "prevent a repetition of the Wall Street bomb explosion."[32]

A crowd at Wall and Broad streets after the 1929 crash. The New York Stock Exchange is on the right. The majority of people are congregating in Wall Street on the left between the "House of Morgan" (23 Wall Street) and Federal Hall (26 Wall Street).

Regulation

In October 1929, a celebrated Yale economist named Irving Fisher reassured worried investors that their "money was safe" on Wall Street.[33] A few days later, stock values plummeted. The stock market crash of 1929 ushered in the Great Depression in which a quarter of working people were unemployed, with soup kitchens, mass foreclosures of farms, and falling prices.[33] During this era, development of the financial district stagnated, and Wall Street "paid a heavy price" and "became something of a backwater in American life."[33] During the New Deal years as well as the forties, there was much less focus on Wall Street and finance. The government clamped down on the practice of buying equities based only on credit, but these policies began to ease. From 1946-1947, stocks could not be purchased "on margin", meaning that an investor had to pay 100% of a stock's cost without taking on any loans.[34] But this margin requirement was reduced four times before 1960, each time stimulating a mini-rally and boosting volume, and when the Federal Reserve reduced the margin requirements from 90% to 70%.[34] These changes made it somewhat easier for investors to buy stocks on credit.[34] The growing national economy and prosperity led to a recovery during the sixties, with some down years during the early seventies in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Trading volumes climbed; in 1967, according to Time Magazine, volume hit 7.5 million shares a day which caused a "traffic jam" of paper with "batteries of clerks" working overtime to "clear transactions and update customer accounts."[35] In 1973, the financial community posted a collective loss of $245 million and needed and help, and got it with the form of temporary help from the goverrnment.[36] Reforms happened; the SEC eliminated fixed commissions which forced "brokers to compete freely with one another for investors' business."[37] In 1975, the Securities & Exchange Commission threw out the NYSE's "Rule 394" which had required that "most stock transactions take place on the Big Board's floor", in effect freeing up trading for electronic methods.[38] In 1976, banks were allowed to buy and sell stocks, which provided more competition for stockbrokers.[38] Reforms had the effect of lowering prices overall, making it easier for more people to participate in the stock market.[38] Broker commissions for each stock sale lessened, but volume increased.[36]

The Reagan years were marked by a renewed push for capitalism, business, with national efforts to de-regulate industries such as telecommunications and aviation. The economy resumed upward growth after a period in the early eighties of languishing. A report in the New York Times described that the flushness of money and growth during these years had spawned a drug culture of sorts, with a rampant acceptance of cocaine use although the overall percent of actual users was most likely small. A reporter wrote:

The Wall Street drug dealer looked like many other successful young female executives. Stylishly dressed and wearing designer sunglasses, she sat in her 1983 Chevrolet Camaro in a no-parking zone across the street from the Marine Midland Bank branch on lower Broadway. The customer in the passenger seat looked like a successful young businessman. But as the dealer slipped him a heat-sealed plastic envelope of cocaine and he passed her cash, the transaction was being watched through the sunroof of her car by Federal drug agents in a nearby building. And the customer - an undercover agent himself -was learning the ways, the wiles and the conventions of Wall Street's drug subculture. -- Peter Kerr in the New York Times, 1987.[39]

In 1987, the stock market plunged[20] and, in the relatively brief recession following, lower Manhattan lost 100,000 jobs according to one estimate.[40] Since telecommunications costs were coming down, banks and brokerage firms could move away from Wall Street to more affordable locations.[40] The recession of 1990–1991 were marked by office vacancy rates downtown which were "persistently high" and with some buildings "standing empty."[11] The day of the drop, October 20, was marked by "stony-faced traders whose sense of humor had abandoned them and in the exhaustion of stock exchange employees struggling to maintain orderly trading."[41] Ironically, it was the same year that Oliver Stone's movie Wall Street appeared. In 1995, city authorities offered the Lower Manhattan Revitalization Plan which offered incentives to convert commercial properties to residential use.[11]

Construction of the World Trade Center began in 1966 but had trouble attracting tenants when completed. Nonetheless, some substantial firms purchased space there. It's impressive height helped make it a visual landmark for drivers and pedestrians. In some respects, the nexus of the financial district moved from the street of Wall Street to Trade Center complex. Real estate growth during the latter part of the 1990s was significant, with deals and new projects happening in the financial district and elsewhere in Manhattan; one firm invested more than $24 billion in various projects, many in the Wall Street area.[42] In 1998, the NYSE and the city struck a $900 million deal which kept the NYSE from moving across the river to Jersey City; the deal was described as the "largest in city history to prevent a corporation from leaving town".[43] A competitor to the NYSE, NASDAQ, moved its headquarters from Washington to New York.[44]

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Twenty-first century

In the first year of the new century, the Big Board, as some termed the NYSE, was described as the world's "largest and most prestigious stock market."[45] But when the World Trade Center was destroyed on September 11th, it left an architectural void as new developments since the 1970s had played off the complex aesthetically. The attacks "crippled" the communications network.[45] One estimate was that 45% of Wall Street's "best office space" had been lost.[20] The physical destruction was immense:

Debris littered some streets of the financial district. National Guard members in camouflage uniforms manned checkpoints. Abandoned coffee carts, glazed with dust from the collapse of the World Trade Center, lay on their sides across sidewalks. Most subway stations were closed, most lights were still off, most telephones did not work, and only a handful of people walked in the narrow canyons of Wall Street yesterday morning. -- Leslie Eaton and Kirk Johnson of the New York Times, September 16, 2001.[46]

Still, the NYSE was determined to re-open on September 17, almost a week after the attack.[46] The attack hastened a trend towards financial firms moving to midtown and contributed to the loss of business on Wall Street, due to temporary-to-permanent relocation to New Jersey and further decentralization with establishments transferred to cities like Chicago, Denver, and Boston.

After September 11, the financial services industry went through a downturn with a sizable drop in year-end bonuses of $6.5 billion, according to one estimate from a state comptroller's office.[47] Many brokers are paid mostly through commission, and get a token annual salary which is dwarfed by the year-end bonus.

To guard against a vehicular bombing in the area, authorities built concrete barriers, and found ways over time to make them more aesthetically appealing by spending $5000 to $8000 apiece on bollards:

To prevent a vehicle-delivered bomb from entering the area, Rogers Marvel designed a new kind of bollard, a faceted piece of sculpture whose broad, slanting surfaces offer people a place to sit in contrast to the typical bollard, which is supremely unsittable. The bollard, which is called the Nogo, looks a bit like one of Frank Gehry's unorthodox culture palaces, but it is hardly insensitive to its surroundings. Its bronze surfaces actually echo the grand doorways of Wall Street's temples of commerce. Pedestrians easily slip through groups of them as they make their way onto Wall Street from the area around historic Trinity Church. Cars, however, cannot pass. -- Blair Kamin in the Chicago Tribune, 2006[48]

Wall Street itself and the Financial District as a whole are crowded with highrises. Further, the loss of the World Trade Center has spurred development on a scale that hadn't been seen in decades. In 2006, Goldman Sachs began building a tower near the former Trade Center site.[27] Tax incentives provided by federal, state and local governments encouraged development. A new World Trade Center complex, centered on Daniel Liebeskind's Memory Foundations plan, is in the early stages of development and one building has already been replaced. The centerpiece to this plan is the 1,776-foot (541 m) tall 1 World Trade Center (formerly known as the Freedom Tower). New residential buildings are sprouting up, and buildings that were previously office space are being converted to residential units, also benefiting from tax incentives. A new Fulton Street Transit Center is planned to improve access. In 2007, the Maharishi Global Financial Capital of New York opened headquarters at 70 Broad Street near the NYSE, in an effort to seek investors.[49]

The Guardian reporter Andrew Clark described the years of 2006 to 2010 as "tumultous" in which the heartland of America is "mired in gloom" with high unemployment around 9.6%, with average house prices falling from $230,000 in 2006 to $183,000, and foreboding increases in the national debt to $13.4 trillion, but that despite the setbacks, the American economy was once more "bouncing back."[50] What had happened during these heady years? Clark wrote:

But the picture is too nuanced simply to dump all the responsibility on financiers. Most Wall Street banks didn't actually go around the US hawking dodgy mortgages; they bought and packaged loans from on-the-ground firms such as Countrywide Financial and New Century Financial, both of which hit a financial wall in the crisis. Foolishly and recklessly, the banks didn't look at these loans adequately, relying on flawed credit-rating agencies such as Standard & Poor's and Moody's, which blithely certified toxic mortgage-backed securities as solid... A few of those on Wall Street, including maverick hedge fund manager John Paulson and the top brass at Goldman Sachs, spotted what was going on and ruthlessly gambled on a crash. They made a fortune but turned into the crisis's pantomime villains. Most, though, got burned – the banks are still gradually running down portfolios of non-core loans worth $800bn. -- The Guardian reporter Andrew Clark, 2010.[50]

The first months of 2008 was a particularly troublesome period which caused Federal Reserve chairman Benjamin Bernanke to "work holidays and weekends" and which did an "extraordinary series of moves."[51] It bolstered U.S. banks and allowed Wall Street firms to borrow "directly from the Fed."[51] These efforts were highly controversial at the time, but from the perspective of 2010, it appeared the Federal exertions had been the right decisions. By 2010, Wall Street firms, in Clark's view, were "getting back to their old selves as engine rooms of wealth, prosperity and excess."[50] A report by Michael Stoler in The New York Sun described a "phoenix-like resurrection" of the area, with residential, commercial, retail and hotels booming in the "third largest business district in the country."[52] At the same time, the investment community was worried about proposed legal reforms, including the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act which dealt with matters such as credit card rates and lending requirements.[53] The NYSE closed two of its trading floors in a move towards transforming itself into an electronic exchange.[22]

Buildings: Physical layout

Federal Hall, Wall Street.

Wall Street's architecture is generally rooted in the Gilded Age, though there are also some art deco influences in the neighborhood. The layout of streets doesn't have the rectangular grid pattern typical of midtown Manhattan, but small streets "barely wide enough for a single lane of traffic are bordered on both sides by some of the tallest buildings in the city", according to one description, which creates "breathtaking artificial canyons" offering spectacular views in some instances.[11] Construction in such narrow steep areas has resulted in occasional accidents such as a crane collapse.[54] One report divided lower Manhattan into three basic districts:[11]

  1. The financial district proper—particularly along John Street
  2. South of the World Trade Center area—the handful of blocks south of the World Trade Center along Greenwich, Washington and West Streets
  3. Seaport district—characterized by century-old low-rise buildings and South Street Seaport; the seaport is "quiet, residential, and has an old world charm" according to one description.[11]

Landmark buildings on Wall Street include Federal Hall, 14 Wall Street (Bankers Trust Company Building), 40 Wall Street (The Trump Building) the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Broad Street and the US headquarters of Deutsche Bank at 60 Wall Street. The Deutsche Bank building (formerly the J.P Morgan headquarters) is the last remaining major investment bank to still have its headquarters on Wall Street.

The older skyscrapers often were built with elaborate facades; such elaborate aesthetics haven't been common in corporate architecture for decades. The World Trade Center, built in the 1970s, was very plain and utilitarian in comparison (the Twin Towers were often criticized as looking like two big boxes, despite their impressive height). Excavation from the World Trade Center was later used by Battery Park City residential development as landfill.[20] 23 Wall Street was built in 1914 and was known as the "House of Morgan" and served for decades as the bank's headquarters and, by some accounts, was viewed as an important address in American finance.

A key anchor for the area is, of course, the New York Stock Exchange. City authorities realize its importance, and believed that it has "outgrown its neoclassical temple at the corner of Wall and Broad streets", and in 1998 offered substantial tax incentives to try to keep it in the financial district.[20] Plans to rebuild it were delayed by the events of 2001.[20] In 2011, the exchange still occupies the same site. The exchange is the locus for an impressive amount of technology and data. For example, to accommodate the three thousand persons who work directly on the Exchange floor requires 3,500 kilowatts of electricity, along with 8,000 phone circuits on the trading floor alone, and 200 miles of fiber-optic cable below ground.[46]

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Personalities: players and deal-makers

Persons associated with Wall Street have become famous. Although their reputations are usually limited to members of the stock brokerage and banking communities, several have gained national and international fame. Some earned their fame for their investment strategies, financing, reporting, legal or regulatory skills, while others are remembered for their greed.[55] One of the most iconic representations of the market prosperity is the Charging Bull sculpture, by Arturo Di Modica. Representing the bull market economy, the sculpture was originally placed in front of the New York Stock Exchange, and subsequently moved to its current location in Bowling Green.

Wall Street's culture is often criticized as being rigid. This is a decades-old stereotype stemming from the Wall Street establishment's protection of its interests, and the link to the WASP establishment. More recent criticism has centered on structural problems and lack of a desire to change well-established habits. Wall Street's establishment resists government oversight and regulation. At the same time, New York City has a reputation as a very bureaucratic city, which makes entry into the neighborhood difficult or even impossible for middle class entrepreneurs. The ethnic background of Wall Streeters remains largely unchanged since the days of the railway barons of the early 20th century, as documented by their portraits in the Wall+Broad chapter of The Corners Project[55]

Template:Image Several well known Wall Street individuals include John Meriwether, John Briggs, Michael Bloomberg, and Warren Buffett (All affiliated at one time or another with the firm Salomon Brothers), as well as Bernie Madoff, and numerous others.

Many talented financiers and bankers worked for Wasserstein Perella during the 1980s which was described in the New York Times as a training ground which helped create "a dynasty of bankers and executives that has spread throughout Wall Street and corporate America".[56] They included Robert S. Wiesenthal who became chairman of Sony; Raymond J. McGuire of Citigroup; Douglas L. Braunstein of JPMorgan Chase; Deborah C. Wright of Carver Federal Savings Bank, Gail Zauder of Credit Suisse; and others.[56] A First Boston analyst Paul Mecurio left corporate life to become a comedian.[56]

The now defunct investment bank of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette had numerous talented people working there including people such as William Donaldson who served in the Nixon administration, as well as Ken Moelis, Bennett Goodman, Herald "Hal" Ritch, Joel Cohen, Safra A. Catz who became president of Oracle Corporation, Tom Dean, Larry Schloss, Michael Connelly, and others.[57]

Wall Street as a financial center

Wall Street in the New York economy

Finance professor Charles R. Geisst wrote that the exchange has become "inextricably intertwined into New York's economy".[45] Wall Street pay, in terms of salaries and bonuses and taxes, is an important part of the economy of New York City, the tri-state metropolitan area, and the United States. In 2008, after a downturn in the stock market, the decline meant $18 billion less in taxable income, with less money available for "apartments, furniture, cars, clothing and services".[47] A falloff in Wall Street's economy could have "wrenching effects on the local and regional economies".[47]

Estimates vary about the number and quality of financial jobs in the city. One estimate was that Wall Street firms employed close to 200,000 persons in 2008.[47] Another estimate was that in 2007, the financial services industry which had a $70 billion profit became 22 percent of the city's revenue.[58] Another estimate (in 2006) was that the financial services industry makes up 9% of the city's work force and 31% of the tax base.[59] An additional estimate (2007) from Steve Malanga of the Manhattan Institute was that the securities industry accounts for 4.7 percent of the jobs in New York City but 20.7 percent of its wages, and he estimated there were 175,000 securities-industries jobs in New York (both Wall Street area and midtown) paying an average of $350,000 annually.[22] Between 1995 and 2005, the sector grew at an annual rate of about 6.6% annually, a respectable rate, but that other financial centers were growing faster.[22] Another estimate (2008) was that Wall Street provided a fourth of all personal income earned in the city, and 10% of New York City's tax revenue.[60]

The seven largest Wall Street firms in the first decade of the 21st century were Bear Stearns, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup Incorporated, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers.[47] During the recession of 2008–2010, many of these firms went out of business or were bought up at firesale prices by other financial firms. In 2008, Lehman filed for bankruptcy,[50] Bear Stearns was bought up by JP Morgan Chase[50] with blessing by the U.S. government,[51] and Merrill Lynch was bought up by Bank of America. These failures marked a catastrophic downsizing of Wall Street as the financial industry goes through restructuring and change. Since New York's financial industry provides almost one-fourth of all income produced in the city, and accounts for 10% of the city's tax revenues and 20% of the state's, the downturn has had huge repercussions for government treasuries.[47] New York's mayor Michael Bloomberg reportedly over a four year period dangled over $100 million in tax incentives to persuade Goldman Sachs to build a 43-story headquarters in the financial district near the destroyed World Trade Center site.[61] In 2009, things looked somewhat gloomy, with one analysis by the Boston Consulting Group suggesting that 65,000 jobs had been permanently lost because of the downturn.[62] But there were signs that Manhattan property prices were rebounding with price rises of 9% annually in 2010, and bonuses were being paid once more, with average bonuses over $124,000 in 2010.[50] The U.S. banking industry employes 1.86 million people and earned profits of $22 billion in the second quarter of 2010, up substantially from previous quarters.[50]

Wall Street versus Midtown Manhattan

A requirement of the New York Stock Exchange was that brokerage firms had to have offices "clustered around Wall Street" so clerks could deliver physical paper copies of stock certificates each week.[20] There were some indications that midtown had been becoming the locus of financial services dealings even by 1911.[63] But as technology progressed, in the middle and later decades of the 20th century, computers and telecommunications replaced paper notifications, meaning that the close proximity requirement could be bypassed in more situations.[20] Many financial firms found that they could move to midtown Manhattan four miles away[11] or elsewhere and still operate effectively. For example, the former investment firm of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette was described as a Wall Street firm but had its headquarters on Park Avenue in midtown.[57] A report described the migration from Wall Street:

The financial industry has been slowly migrating from its historic home in the warren of streets around Wall Street to the more spacious and glamorous office towers of Midtown Manhattan. Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup, and Bear Stearns have all moved north. -- USA Today, October 2001.[20]

Nevertheless, a key magnet for the Wall Street remains the New York Stock Exchange. Some "old guard" firms such as Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch (bought by Bank of America in 2009), have remained "fiercely loyal to the financial district" location, and new ones such as Deutsche Bank have chosen office space in the district.[20] So-called "face–to–face" trading between buyers and sellers remains a "cornerstone" of the NYSE, with a benefit of having all of a deal's players close at hand, including investment bankers, lawyers, and accountants.[20]

In 2011, the Manhattan Financial District is one of the largest business districts in the United States, and second in New York City only to Midtown in terms of dollar volume of business transacted.

Wall Street as a neighborhood

Template:Image Template:Image During most of the 20th century, Wall Street was a business community with practically only offices which emptied out at night. A report in the New York Times in 1961 described a "deathlike stillness that settles on the district after 5:30 and all day Saturday and Sunday."[11] But there has been a change towards greater residential use of the area, pushed forwards by technological changes and shifting market conditions. The general pattern is for several hundred thousand workers to commute into the area during the day, sometimes by sharing a taxicab[64] from other parts of the city as well as from New Jersey and Long Island, and then leave at night. In 1970, only 833 people lived "south of Chambers Street"; by 1990; 13,782 people were residents with the addition of areas such as Battery Park City[20] and Southbridge Towers.[40] Battery Park City was built on 92 acres of landfill, and 3,000 people moved there beginning about 1982, but by 1986 there was evidence of more shops and stores and a park, along with plans for more residential development.[65]

According to one description in 1996, "The area dies at night ... It needs a neighborhood, a community."[40] During the past two decades there has been a shift towards greater residential living areas in the Wall Street area, with incentives from city authorities in some instances.[20] Many empty office buildings have been converted to lofts and apartments; for example, the office building where Harry Sinclair, the oil magnate involved with the Teapot Dome scandal, was converted to a co-op in 1979.[40] In 1996, a fifth of buildings and warehouses were empty, and many were converted to living areas.[40] Some conversions met with problems, such as aging gargoyles on building exteriors having to be expensively restored to meet with current building codes.[40] Residents in the area have sought to have a supermarket, a movie theater, a pharmacy, more schools, and a "good diner".[40] The discount retailer named Job Lot used to be located at the World Trade Center but moved to Church Street; merchants bought extra unsold items at steep prices and sold them as a discount to consumers and shoppers included "thrifty homemakers and browsing retirees" who "rubbed elbows with City Hall workers and Wall Street executives"; but the firm went bust in 1993.[47] There were reports that the number of residents increased by 60% during the 1990s to about 25,000[20] although a second estimate (based on the 2000 census based on a different map) places the residential (nighttime and weekend) population in 2000 at 12,042.[11] By 2001, there were several grocery stores, dry cleaners, and two grade schools and a top high school.[20] There is a barber shop across from the New York Stock Exchange which has been there a long time.[66] By 2001, there were more signs of dogwalkers at night and a 24-hour neighborhood, although the general pattern of crowds during the working hours and emptiness at night was still apparent.[11] There were ten hotels and thirteen museums by 2001.[11] Stuyvesant High School moved to its present location near Battery Park City in 1992 and has been described as one of the nation's premier high schools with emphasis on science and mathematics.[11] In 2007, the French fashion retailer Hermès opened a store in the financial district to sell items such as a "$4,700 custom-made leather dressage saddle or a $47,000 limited edition alligator briefcase."[67] Some streets have been designated as pedestrian–only with vehicular traffic prohibited at some times.[67] There are reports of panhandlers like elsewhere in the city.[68] By 2010, the residential population had increased to 24,400 residents[69] with crime statistics showing no murders in 2010.[70] The area is growing with luxury high-end apartments and upscale retailers.[52]

Wall Street as a tourist destination

Tourists visiting New York City often include Wall Street sights on their itineraries. One report described lower Manhattan as "swarming with camera-carrying tourists".[71] Tour guides highlight places such as Trinity Church, the Federal Reserve gold vaults 80 feet below street level (worth $100 billion), and the NYSE.[72] A Scoundrels of Wall Street Tour is a walking historical tour which includes a museum visit and discussion of various financiers "who were adept at finding ways around finance laws or loopholes through them".[73] Occasionally artists make impromptu performances; for example, in 2010, a troupe of 22 dancers "contort their bodies and cram themselves into the nooks and crannies of the Financial District in Bodies in Urban Spaces" choreographed by Willi Donner.[74] One chief attraction, the Federal Reserve Building in lower Manhattan, paid $750,000 to open a visitors' gallery in 1997.[75] The New York Stock Exchange and the American Stock Exchange also spent money in the late 1990s to upgrade facilities for visitors.[76] Attractions include the gold vault beneath the Federal Reserve and that "staring down at the trading floor was as exciting as going to the Statue of Liberty."[76]

Wall Street versus Main Street

Not just a metonym, Wall Street has a sign post.

As a figure of speech contrasted to "Main Street", the term "Wall Street" can refer to big business interests against those of small business and the working of middle class. It is sometimes used more specifically to refer to research analysts, shareholders, and financial institutions such as investment banks. Whereas "Main Street" conjures up images of locally owned businesses and banks, the phrase "Wall Street" is commonly used interchangeably with the phrase "Corporate America". It is also sometimes used in contrast to distinguish between the interests, culture, and lifestyles of investment banks and those of Fortune 500 industrial or service corporations.

Wall Street in the public imagination

Trinity church from Wall Street.

Wall Street in a conceptual sense represents financial and economic power. To Americans, it can sometimes represent elitism and power politics, and its role has been a source of controversy throughout the nation's history, particularly beginning around the Gilded Age period in the late 19th century. Wall Street became the symbol of a country and economic system that many Americans see as having developed through trade, capitalism, and innovation.[77]

Wall Street has become synonymous with financial interests, often used negatively.[78] During the mortgage mess from 2007–2010, Wall Street financing was blamed as one of the causes, although most commentators blame an interplay of factors. The U.S. government with the Troubled Asset Relief Program bailed out the banks and financial backers with billions of dollars, but the bailout was often criticized as politically motivated,[78] and was criticized by journalists as well as the public. Analyst Robert Kuttner in the Huffington Post criticized the bailout as helping large Wall Street firms such as Citigroup while neglecting to help smaller community development banks such as Chicago's ShoreBank.[78] One writer in the Huffington Post looked at FBI statistics on robbery, fraud, and crime and concluded that Wall Street was the "most dangerous neighborhood in the United States" if one factored in the $50 billion fraud perpetrated by Bernie Madoff.[25] When large firms such as Enron, WorldCom and Global Crossing were found guilty of fraud, Wall Street was often blamed,[33] even though these firms had headquarters around the nation and not in Wall Street. Many complained that the resulting Sarbanes-Oxley legislation dampened the business climate with regulations that were "overly burdensome."[79] Interest groups seeking favor with Washington lawmakers, such as car dealers, have often sought to portray their interests as allied with Main Street rather than Wall Street, although analyst Peter Overby on National Public Radio suggested that car dealers have written over $250 billion in consumer loans and have real ties with Wall Street.[80] When the United States Treasury bailed out large financial firms, to ostensibly halt a downward spiral in the nation's economy, there was tremendous negative political fallout, particularly when reports came out that monies supposed to be used to ease credit restrictions were being used to pay bonuses to highly-paid employees.[65] Analyst William D. Cohan argued that it was "obscene" how Wall Street reaped "massive profits and bonuses in 2009" after being saved by "trillions of dollars of American taxpayers' treasure" despite Wall Street's "greed and irresponsible risk-taking."[81] Washington Post reporter Suzanne McGee called for Wall Street to make a sort of public apology to the nation, and expressed dismay that people such as Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein hadn't expressed contrition despite being sued by the SEC in 2009.[82] McGee wrote that "Bankers aren't the sole culprits, but their too-glib denials of responsibility and the occasional vague and waffling expression of regret don't go far enough to deflect anger."[82]

Template:Image But chief banking analyst at Goldman Sachs, Richard Ramsden, is "unapologetic" and sees "banks as the dynamos that power the rest of the economy."[50] Ramsden believes "risk-taking is vital" and said in 2010:

You can construct a banking system in which no bank will ever fail, in which there's no leverage. But there would be a cost. There would be virtually no economic growth because there would be no credit creation. -- Richard Ramsden of Goldman Sachs, 2010.[50]

Others in the financial industry believe they've been unfairly castigated by the public and by politicians. For example, Anthony Scaramucci reportedly told President Barack Obama in 2010 that he felt like a piñata, "whacked with a stick" by "hostile politicians".[50]

The financial misdeeds of various figures throughout American history sometimes casts a dark shadow on financial investing as a whole, and include names such as William Duer, Jim Fisk and Jay Gould (the latter two believed to have been involved with an effort to collapse the U.S. gold market in 1869) as well as modern figures such as Bernard Madoff who "bilked billions from investors".[73]

In addition, images of Wall Street and its figures have loomed large. The 1987 Oliver Stone film Wall Street created the iconic figure of Gordon Gekko who used the phrase "greed is good", which caught on in the cultural parlance.[83] According to one account, the Gekko character was a "straight lift" from the real world junk-bond dealer Michael Milkin,[33] who later pled guilty to felony charges for violating securities laws. Stone commented in 2009 how the movie had had an unexpected cultural influence, not causing them to turn away from corporate greed, but causing many young people to choose Wall Street careers because of that movie.[83] A reporter repeated other lines from the film:

I’m talking about liquid. Rich enough to have your own jet. Rich enough not to waste time. Fifty, a hundred million dollars, Buddy. A player. -- lines from the script of Wall Street[83]

Wall Street firms have however also contributed to projects such as Habitat for Humanity as well as done food programs in Haiti and trauma centers in Sudan and rescue boats during floods in Bangladesh.[84]

Wall Street in popular culture

Competitors to Wall Street

During much of the 20th century, the United States and its financial capital of New York City were the leaders. But over the past few decades, with the rise of a multipolar world with new regional powers and global capitalism, numerous financial centers have challenged Wall Street's predominance, particularly from Asia which some analysts believe will be the focus of new worldwide growth.[88] New York still has strengths in having a "concentration of finance professionals" -- prime brokers, large banks, traders, lawyers, accountants, and private bankers.[22] One analyst suggested the prime factors for success as a financial city were three:

  1. a pool of money to lend or invest
  2. a decent legal framework
  3. high-quality human resources[79]
  • London. Reports suggest that the City of London has overtaken New York as a financial capital[89] with better regulation. London's merger volume was higher than New York's by $79 billion in 2005 and equity issuance was $130 billion versus $105 billion in the United States.[57] Companies seeking to list their stocks have started going to London before New York.[59] There is a perception that "regulatory scrutiny is more burdensome in the United States than in London"[22][59] and which has a "transparent and reliable legal system."[90] One report was that London's location between Asia and the U.S. meant that it was often suitable in terms of time zones.[90] With multinationals sending their employees there; one estimate was there were 224,000 Americans in Britain in 2008.[91]

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  • Shanghai. Official efforts have been directed to making Pudong a financial leader by 2010.[92] Efforts during the 1990s were mixed, but in the early 21st century, Shanghai gained ground. Factors such as a "protective banking sector" and a "highly restricted capital market" have held the city back, according to one analysis in 2009 in China Daily.[93] Shanghai has done well in terms of market capitalization but it needs to "attract an army of money managers, lawyers, accountants, actuaries, brokers and other professionals, Chinese and foreign," to enable it to compete with New York and London.[94] China is generating tremendous new capital, which makes it easier to stage initial public offerings of state-owned companies in places like Shanghai.[22]
  • Hong Kong. In 2010, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange raised nearly $53 billion for initial public offerings, compared with only $42 billion for the U.S. and $16 billion (£10 billion) in London.[59][95] Hong Kong was the site of the world's largest I.P.O. in 2006 of the $19.1 billion Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.[22] Hedge funds are doing well in Hong Kong with increased growth from 2006 to 2010.[95] One estimate in 2009 was that the Hong Kong stock market was the world's seventh largest and noted that 70 percent of the world's 100 largest banks were based in the city.[96]
  • Tokyo. One report suggests that Japanese authorities are working on plans to transform Tokyo but have met with mixed success, noting that "initial drafts suggest that Japan’s economic specialists are having trouble figuring out the secret of the Western financial centers’ success."[97] Efforts include more English-speaking restaurants and services and earthquake-resistant offices, but that have neglected more powerful stimuli such as lower taxes and a deep-seated aversion to finance.[97]
  • Singapore. This city was mentioned as a competitor given its proximity to Asian markets.[90]
  • Dubai. This city has been mentioned as a competitor as well.[22]
  • Others. Cities such as São Paulo and Johannesburg and other "would-be hubs" lack liquidity and the "skills base," according to one source.[79] Financial industries in countries such as India, Korea and Malaysia require not only well-trained people but the "whole institutional infrastructure of laws, regulations, contracts, trust and disclosure" which takes time to happen.[79]

New York Times analyst Daniel Gross wrote:

In today’s burgeoning and increasingly integrated global financial markets — a vast, neural spaghetti of wires, Web sites and trading platforms — the N.Y.S.E. is clearly no longer the epicenter. Nor is New York. The largest mutual-fund complexes are in Valley Forge, Pa., Los Angeles and Boston, while trading and money management are spreading globally. Since the end of the cold war, vast pools of capital have been forming overseas, in the Swiss bank accounts of Russian oligarchs, in the Shanghai vaults of Chinese manufacturing magnates and in the coffers of funds controlled by governments in Singapore, Russia, Dubai, Qatar and Saudi Arabia that may amount to some $2.5 trillion. -- Daniel Gross in 2007[22]

An example is the alternative trading platform known as BATS based in Kansas City which came "out of nowhere to gain a 9 percent share in the market for trading United States stocks."[22] The firm has computers in New Jersey, two salespersons in New York City, but the remaining 33 employees work in a center in Missouri.[22]

Transportation

File:Pier11ferry.JPG
Pier 11

Wall Street being historically a commuter destination, much transportation infrastructure has been developed to serve it. Today, Pier 11 at the foot of the street is a busy terminal for New York Waterway and other ferries. The New York City subway has three stations under Wall Street:

Motor traffic, particularly during working hours, is often congested but driving late at night and on weekends can be easier. The roads are not arranged according to midtown's distinctive rectangular grid pattern with staggered lights, but have small often one-lane roads with numerous stoplights and stop signs. A highway runs along the East River and the Downtown Manhattan Heliport serves Wall Street.

See also

References

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Further reading

  • Atwood, Albert W. and Erickson, Erling A. "Morgan, John Pierpont, (Apr. 17, 1837 – March 31, 1913)," in Dictionary of American Biography, Volume 7 (1934)
  • Carosso, Vincent P. The Morgans: Private International Bankers, 1854–1913. Harvard U. Press, 1987. 888 pp. ISBN 978-0-674-58729-8
  • Carosso, Vincent P. Investment Banking in America: A History Harvard University Press (1970)
  • Chernow, Ron. The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance, (2001) ISBN 0-8021-3829-2
  • Fraser, Steve. Every Man a Speculator: A History of Wall Street in American Life HarperCollins (2005)
  • Geisst, Charles R. Wall Street: A History from Its Beginnings to the Fall of Enron. Oxford University Press. 2004. online edition
  • Moody, John. The Masters of Capital: A Chronicle of Wall Street Yale University Press, (1921) online edition
  • Morris, Charles R. The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy (2005) ISBN 978-0-8050-8134-3
  • Perkins, Edwin J. Wall Street to Main Street: Charles Merrill and Middle-class Investors (1999)
  • Sobel, Robert. The Big Board: A History of the New York Stock Market (1962)
  • Sobel, Robert. The Great Bull Market: Wall Street in the 1920s (1968)
  • Sobel, Robert. Inside Wall Street: Continuity & Change in the Financial District (1977)
  • Strouse, Jean. Morgan: American Financier. Random House, 1999. 796 pp. ISBN 978-0-679-46275-0

External links

40°42′23″N 74°00′34″W / 40.70639°N 74.00944°W / 40.70639; -74.00944

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