Wall Street

Wall Street is an eight-block-long street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs between Broadway in the west to South Street and the East River in the east. The term "Wall Street" has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, the American financial services industry, New York–based financial interests, or the Financial District itself.

Wall Street is home to the world's two largest stock exchanges by total market capitalization, the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. Several other major exchanges have or had headquarters in the Wall Street area, including the New York Mercantile Exchange, the New York Board of Trade, the New York Futures Exchange (NYFE), and the former American Stock Exchange.

Quotes[edit]

Journalism was being whittled away by a Wall Street theory that profits can be maximized by minimizing the product.
- Russell Baker, in Goodbye to Newspapers?, The New York Review of Books, 16 August 2007

The president, the secretary of state, the businessman, the preacher, the vendor, the spies, the clients and managers—all walking around Wall Street like chickens with their heads cut off—rushing to escape bankruptcy—plotting to melt down the Statue of Liberty-to press more copper pennies—to breed more headless chickens—to put more feathers in their caps-medals, diplomas, stock certificates, honorary doctorates—eggs and eggs of headless chickens.
- Giannina Braschi, in the Postcolonial novel United States of Banana (2011) p.26 [1]

Wall Street is the only place that people ride to in a Rolls Royce to get advice from those who take the subway.
- Warren Buffet, in Simon Dixon Student to CEO, Ecademy Press, 2011, p. 125

Charlie and I cringe when we hear analysts talk admiringly about managements who always “make the numbers.” In truth, business is too unpredictable for the numbers always to be met. Inevitably, surprises occur. When they do, a CEO whose focus is centered on Wall Street will be tempted to make up the numbers.
- Warren Buffett, Chairman's Letter - 2016. Berkshire Hathaway (February 25, 2017).

Hating Wall Street is an American tradition that dates back even to the days when Thomas Jefferson cursed that money lover Alexander Hamilton. And for centuries, the complaints about it have largely stayed the same: 'It does nothing! It creates chaos! It's a parasite that sucks hardworking Americans dry!'
- Adam Davidson, in What Does Wall Street Do for You?, The New York Times, 11 January 2012

No man can control Wall Street. Wall Street is like the ocean. No man can govern it. It is too vast. Wall Street is full of eddies and currents. The thing to do is to watch them, to exercise a little common sense, and … to come out on top.
- Jay Gould Interview with the New York Herald

Wall Street is where prophets tell us what will happen and profits tell us what did happen.
- Greg Heberlein (September 28, 1986) "'Doctor' Lefevre Seeks Cure For Hospitalized Bull Market", The Seattle Times, p. C2.

Watch the walls come down, whether it's in the South or on Wall Street. When the walls come down, what do we find? More markets, more talent, more capital and growth. Which means that the race and sex discrimination stunt economic growth. It's not good for capitalism. It's not good for America's growth. And it's not morally right.
- Jesse Jackson, in Interview Jesse Jackson, pbs online

Panic in Wall Street, brokers feeling melancholy. Good times coming. Good times have come. Listening to the strains of genuine negro ragtime, brokers forget their cares.
- Scott Joplin, "Wall Street Rag" (1909).

The essential is the object. Error consists in forgetting that grain, cotton, wool are vital objects and in being interested in them only because of their value in gold, their speculative value. The economic purpose is not ‘to make millionaires out of gasoline’ but to distribute gasoline according to demand and need. Wall street is an abstraction.
- Fernand Léger, exhibition catalogue, John Becker Gallery, New York, March 1933

Wall Street is populated by a bunch of people whose primary goal is to make money, and the rules are pretty much caveat emptor.
- Steven Levitt, in David Futrelle CNN Money: Interview with Steven Levitt of Freakonomics, CNN, 18 June 2010

Wall Street, the banks, and corporate America, has been able to call the shots here. They control our members of Congress and they get what they want.
- Michael Moore,in DealBook’s Interview With Michael Moore, The New York Times, 23 September 2009

I think of Wall Street guys as the crookedest in the world...
- Mario Puzo, The first interview he granted after the publication of The Godfather, quoted in Jacquin Sanders, 'Mario Puzo: Author of ‘The Godfather’', The News-Herald (March 18, 1970), p. 25

You know, I think many people have the mistaken impression that Congress regulates Wall Street. In truth that's not the case. The real truth is that Wall Street regulates the Congress.
- Bernie Sanders, in Interview with Senator Bernie Sanders, RealClearPolitics, 16 May 2012

The business model of Wall Street is fraud. In my view, there is no better example than the recently-exposed illegal behavior at Wells Fargo.
- Bernie Sanders, Wells Fargo’s Business Model is Fraud, Medium (September 22, 2016)

Let us wage a moral and political war against the billionaires and corporate leaders, on Wall Street and elsewhere, whose policies and greed are destroying the middle class of America.
- Bernie Sanders, in Bernie Sanders, Plus Google.com, 12 June 2012

Mutual funds are an overrated investment heavily promoted by Wall Street.
- Peter Schiff (2006) Crash Proof

Holding the citizens of Wall Street to the standards of honesty which govern everyone else is, if one thinks about it, the very opposite of class warfare.
- Richard North Patterson
- on The Bulwark