The Wall Street Journal does not know what to make of last week’s events. Some headlines from this weekend’s print issue:
- Stocks’ wild week ends in the green.
- Wall Street sounds alarm about trade war’s impact.
- World takes urgent steps on economy.
- Bessant walks a tightrope on tariff policy.
And that’s just page A-1. Page B-1 follows with “Surviving the market freakout.”
Yes, it’s true, we began Monday morning expecting a “Black Monday” for the ages, which quickly fizzled out. The week ended with the S&P 500 index up over 400 points (more than 8 percent). You may be shocked and surprised to learn that the S&P index is still up almost 6 percent over the past twelve-month period.
Wall Street, the road in lower Manhattan, travels a mere 8 blocks (one-half mile) in length. I’ve walked its entire course, out and back. It was named after a literal wall that used to occupy the site, built by the original Dutch settlers to mark the northern limit of their village and to protect from the local natives (or vice versa).
The best description I’ve heard of the road is that “it begins at a cemetery (Trinity Church) and ends at the (East) river. As a thoroughfare, it’s not even the most interesting street in its neighborhood (in my opinion).
But it does host the New York Stock Exchange building, still bearing the visible scars, when I last visited, of a 1920 anarchist bombing. It also hosts the old Cocoa Exchange building (address: 1 Wall Street Court), now converted to residential use. Fans of the John Wick movie franchise will recognize this triangular building (reminiscent of the Flatiron building) as the facade of the Continental Hotel.
With such a storied history, the road looms large in the public imagination as a shorthand for anything to do with money and finance.
The English actor Jeremy Irons played two famous movie roles with ties to the financial district. You will recall in Die Hard 3 (1995), Irons plays the bank robber who steals the gold hoard from the vault underneath the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, located a few blocks north of Wall Street.
In Margin Call (2011), Irons plays the investment bank CEO who famously declares near the end of the film,
It’s just money. It’s made up.
