Posted on 07/10/2009 6:38:19 PM PDT by Kaslin
In the 15th and 16th centuries, Florence, Genoa and Venice were the financial capitals of the Western world. When they declined, financial leadership shifted to Amsterdam, then to London, and finally to New York, whose supremacy went unchallenged from 1945 until the end of the 20th century.
In the new millennium, however, it is showing cracks. A decade ago, companies fought for the privilege of being listed on the New York exchanges. But interest has dropped significantly since the bursting of the tech bubble in 2000. The credit crisis has only made things worse.
Will the city be able to retain its title as the world's finance king? What will Wall Street look like in 2015?
Geography alone guarantees that New York will remain one of the world's financial leaders. A globalized economy spanning 24 time zones offers room for at least three major financial centers. With one center likely in Europe or the Middle East and a second in East Asia, New York would be the natural third pillar in a hemisphere that offers little competition for the job.
Vanishing Advantage
If we look beyond the Americas to the broader world, however, New York's enduring supremacy is not a foregone conclusion.
Besides the power of inertia — people like to trade where others trade, so they trade in New York — the city has benefited from three comparative advantages in the past: a sophisticated and well-trained work force, reliable but not intrusive regulations and (at least since Ronald Reagan's presidency) a favorable tax and political environment. All these advantages have shrunk, if not vanished.
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Links to the rest of the story don’t work, so without reading the article I’ll take a wild guess that they predict Dubai as the potential new financial hub.
I’m betting that the gist of the article is that there is no real need anymore for a physical hub.
sao paulo
buenos aires
osaka
jakarta
seoul
Shanghai
bombay
Kuala Lumpur
frankfurt
amsterdam
london
brussels
tel aviv
cairo
new york
chicago
toronto
mexico city
gotta be on this list. Most likely from the first 9.
I guess pretty much the same as 2009 only more so: gals wearing flip-flops and guys in pajama bottoms walking their twerpy little dogs where brokers and floor traders used to stride.
new financial centers such as Singapore or Dubai — or even old ones like Zurich — could become a real threat.
Dubai is a lost cause, imo. Their economy is far too narrow and one sided. And singapore is too small. If singapore had a country the size of japan to draw resources and manpower from, I would suspect singapore as an up and coming potential heavyweight.
I don’t know about zurich. Maybe. But they are in the EU. They are smaller than frankfurt, brussels, amsterdam, and paris. So why would zurich rise in the EU when the others are bigger? That would be like columbus ohio displacing new york city. It’s possible. Just very unlikely. Right?
Swiss Accounts must be real big!
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