Great speech Obama! Bullish...

Except about $10 million a year.

what's ten dollars between friends?

Would be nice to see the banks leave NYC because of regulation, realestate would go down in a big way.

"Would be nice to see the banks leave NYC because of regulation, real estate would go down in a big way."

Maybe we can get rid of all of the lawyers, families, and fashion folks too. Bring back the crack whores and junkies. We can then give our apartments to people that don't want to work and donate our savings to pay for their health care.

Chris13 - do you have any clue how much tax revenue (corporate income tax, personal income tax, sales tax) would be lost if the banks left NYC? You might be able to pick up a cheap apartment, but it would be in a bankrupt city. Not a pleasant prospect.

where would they go? africa? russia?

"Bring back the crack whores and junkies." ... um, we never left, thank you very much.

AR a lot of smart ppl are expatting to singapore

New York would be in bad shape without the tax revenues from highly paid bankers, lawyers, etc.

aboutready, thanks for another completely naive comment.

se10024, i can see some people wanting to expat, under any set of circumstances you have some people who'd like to go elsewhere. i can't see the men/women/spouses/families of the entire banking industry relocating to any given location. i've been to singapore. would never live there.

once again the only thing licc adds is criticism of someone. good job, licc. stay classy.

LICC, what's so naive about her comments? What, they're going to Europe where taxes are higher and the anti-banking climate is more severe? Please, tell me where 'the banks' are going to go to.

If bank revenues are going to be forcibly reduced, they will move as much as they can to lower-cost locations. You are naive if you think otherwise.

aboutready, do you want to swear at me? I know it is hard for you to keep the profanities in.

ar, i have to say for a family with kids singapore/hong kong offer pretty good infrastructure...
and not just 'some people' need to go, only high earners. what gets lost often is that the 'wealthy' don't need to go anywhere, they will continue to live in their 8 room park apt and be invested in munis and pay 13% average rate. the middle/upper middle class also won't/can't go. only those who are in the process of building wealth can/will go. how many jobs they take with them remains to be seen

printer,'the banks' don't need to go anywhere they enjoy a very low tax rate right here

sure, why not? piss off.

se10024, i'm not saying that the center of global banking might not shift over time. there's a fairly high likelihood that it will. but i don't think that shift will involve huge numbers of senior banking expats. a few to run the show. and i wouldn't be surprised if the younger bankers of the world increasingly were citizens of other countries. the shift will occur over time, and then one day we'll realize that again we've shifted an industry almost entirely elsewhere willingly in the interest of some profits.

i know only a handful of bankers who'd be willing to uproot their families, at this point in banking history at least, to move to singapore or hong kong (although with a good COLA adjustment i see the latter more than the former). and if you were to have huge numbers of bankers doing so, of course the schools, etc. would become an impossible situation.

yes, i see many other countries rushing out to create an unregulated environment where banks run wild, leading to massive bailouts that create crippling gov't debts and deficits. Sounds like a winning formula - it worked fantastically well for Iceland.

At the risk of appeasing Rufus, the real beneficiary could be Chicago, assuming the derivatives move to those exchanges.

singapore is a dictatorship. ditto hong kong--without political reform in the people's republic it will not be the business center of asia, let alone the financial center of the globe. these are both reasonable places to live as an american citizen. but guess what? as an american citizen you pay american taxes. you really think large numbers of american citizens are going to renounce their nationality in favor of citizenship in the people's republic?

the global financial sector is truly enormous, and will never have one center. new york is the center of US finance, and it is very, very hard to see that changing. that said, monocultures are unhealthy: the nyc economy cannot and does not rely on finance alone and, after a few years of pain, the shrinking of the financial sector will actually be good for the city (hopefully my hedge fund won't succumb to the shrinkage!) and it will certainly be good for the nation.

people complain about the size of healthcare relative to the economy. but the size of finance relative to the economy is a much larger inefficiency. hopefully the democrats will grow some balls and cut us down to size.

Don't worry, happyrenter ... NY's economy is not a monoculture, but a healthy two-legged stool: finance and tourism.

Equity markets are up 10 out of the past 11 days. Paulson, who bet the right direction down, bet the right direction up, is bullish. NY real estate bears, what is the logic of your position? That you can rent at the Ellington for cheaper?

"Would be nice to see the banks leave NYC because of regulation, real estate would go down in a big way."

"Maybe we can get rid of all of the lawyers, families, and fashion folks too."

No, just the biggest putzes. Would be nice to have fashion folks take more prominence.
BTW, the families came WITH the wall street money. Wall street didn't push them out.

"Bring back the crack whores and junkies."

I'd certainly trade some of them for yet another junior banker.

"We can then give our apartments to people that don't want to work"

Apartments would be cheaper... but not FREE. Jeez.

Now you're getting to crazyland.

"and donate our savings to pay for their health care."

We already have that. Would probably be less once more rich leave and the poor are less jealous.

"Equity markets are up 10 out of the past 11 days. Paulson, who bet the right direction down, bet the right direction up, is bullish. NY real estate bears, what is the logic of your position?"

easy... that we were right. And, as you noted, STOCKS were the better bet... and that did me very well.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/paulson-co-turns-bullish-on-housing-economy-2010-04-21

Paulson & Co. turns bullish on housing, economy
After betting against mortgages, manager sees home prices up to 10% in 2011

so, the national housing market tanks, and the bulls argue "Manhattan isn't like the rest of the country".
now, the national housing market has been suggested MIGHT improve... and suddenly.... Manhattan is just like the rest of the country.

Nice try!

So is that the John Paulson who made billions shorting the housing market in 2007 and 2008 or the guy who started shorting it in 2005? Or is it the guy whose gold fund was down 14% in the first month?

"New York would be in bad shape without the tax revenues from highly paid bankers, lawyers, etc."

You mean NY is not in bad shape right now? Oh man, if you think NY is in good shape now, I sure would not want to find out what your definition of "bad shape" is.

"Would be nice to see the banks leave NYC because of regulation, realestate would go down in a big way."

And where do you propose the banks go to? The new regulations will be federal, so moving to another state will not allow them to avoid them.

As a New Yorker, I want all the insurance companies, banks & hedge funds to be located here
but as an American, we need a sound financial system. We can't have a Goldman gaming one client to benefit another. To say that Goldman had no legal obligation to be truthful to both clients is absurd.

Agreed.

Wall Street lobbyists have been able to push the congressmen they buy too far. Still blows my mind that brokers don't have fiduciary duty!

The President and Congress are all in favor of buying. These are Democrats. When Bush was in, they were in favor of buying. And you are renting? You are fighting the United States government?

Large numbers of american citizens will NOT expat because it doesn't make any sense for them to do so. This affects only a very small numbers of people (those with very high income but not truly wealthy). Those people absolutely WILL expat and that process is already underway.

Many financial firms have left, or more importantly have "grown" elsewhere. NYC and Boston insiders are acutely aware of this. There is a reason NYC has had almost flatline population growth over the last 50 years.

In the '80s back offices started moving, Tampa, NJ, MN. Then front offices, Connecticut...UBS, GCM, Thompson, Hedge Funds to Greenwich..Money Management growth in Calif. The % of Financial services revenues and % of jobs in the industry continue to decline in NYC, this will continue. Most don't realize this when the economy and markets are expanding. But it still hurts the ability of Govt's to provide services. They become even more dependent than ever on the golden gooses.

"But it still hurts the ability of Govt's to provide services."

Perhaps the "Govt" needs to stop providing so many "services", and stick with the basics.