2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Would Bernie supporters be so kind as to define "Wall Street" for us? [View all]marew
(1,588 posts)Wall Street is a street running eight blocks, roughly northwest to southeast, from Broadway to South Street on the East River in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, New York City. Over time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, the American financial sector (even if financial firms are not physically located there), or signifying New York-based financial interests. Anchored by Wall Street, New York City has been called both the most economically powerful city and the leading financial center of the world,and the city is home to the world's two largest stock exchanges by total market capitalization, the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ.
Wall Street in a conceptual sense represents financial and economic power. To Americans, it can and does sometimes represent elitism and power politics, and its role has been a source of controversy throughout the nation's history. Wall Street has become synonymous with financial interests, often used negatively. The U.S. government with the Troubled Asset Relief Program bailed out the banks and financial backers with billions of taxpayer dollars, but the bailout was often criticized as politically motivated.
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".
According to the discipline of anthropology, the term culture represents the customs, values, morals, laws, and rituals which a group or society shares. In the public imagination, Wall Street represents economics and finance. However, although Wall Street
employees exhibit greedy and self-interested behaviors to the public, these behaviors are justified through their own value system and social practices.