When the jets hit the WTC, the NYSE shut down. Logical, given the uncertainties. But it raised the question: Why is the one activity vital to the capitalist system all concentrated in one place? Fortunately even Chuck Yaeger with months of practice couldn’t hit the relatively low NYSE building, surrounded as it is by taller buildings.
But all the same this question and improving computer technology have drastically changed “Wall Street.” Just recently the NYSE ended “open outcry” trading on the Wall Street floor. Computerized trading, executed at a bunch of server farms in New Jersey have handled the vast preponderance of stock trades for a number of years now.
Those server farms are high and dry and have their own backup power. So why did the stock exchange close down?
This is only a part of the bigger question raised on 9/11/01. Given that NYC is an expensive place to do business, many businesses would be wise to relocate. Some did, and that movement has continued under one Democrat in the Albany statehouse after another. Why do business in NYC if you can do it for less elsewhere.
Mostly, I think it is inertia and senior management being native New Yorkers. The demands of the bottom line will force them to keep asking this question as times goes on.
Why NYC? Why not Charlotte, Cincinnati or Kenosha?