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Where the Banking Things Are
In a column about something else entirely, Brad DeLong says in passing:
The Economic Policy Institute reports a poll showing that Americans overwhelmingly believe that the economic policies of the past
year have greatly enriched the bankers of Midtown Manhattan and London’s Canary Wharf (they really aren’t concentrated on Wall Street or in the City of London anymore).
True, but "Wall Street" and "the City" are very handy labels for referring to the financial industry in, respectively, the United States and Great Britain. Anyone who writes about finance should therefore be eager to keep them around. In fact, I think we need more of them for other countries.
But do we have them? Are the bankers of Frankfurt, Zurich, and Tokyo concentrated in some part of the city that's since become a synonym for, respectively, the German, Swiss, and Japanese financial industry? If so, what are they? If not, why not? I remember wanting such a word for the Japanese financial sector once, but I couldn't find it. But I also couldn't figure out whether that was because it doesn't exist, or because I just didn't know where to look. Can any jet setting financiers help me out here?
Kabutocho (兜町), where
Kabutocho (兜町), where the Tokyo Stock Exchange is located, has the same meaning to Japanese that Wall St. does in the U.S. It literally means "helmet town."
Reference
http://www.tse.or.jp/english/about/history/kabuto/index.html
...and Times Square has become Disneyland
Madison Avenue hasn't been on Madison Avenue for a long time, either (except on Mad Men). Even Broadway is mostly on W. 44th and W. 45th streets. Is Fleet Street still on Fleet Street?
But the big question is, what happened to Main Street? (Moved out to the nearest mall, I think.)
The Dutch financial industry
The Dutch financial industry used to be known as "Damrak," after the street on which the old Beurs is located.
Migration of major industrial headquarters from their iconic seats is hardly a new phenomenon, though. Neither film production nor movie industry command-and-control have been concentrated in Hollywood for 50+ years, but "Hollywood" is a vastly more evocative word than "Burbank." "Silicon Valley" is as much in San Mateo County and Walnut Creek as it is in the Santa Clara Valley.
When locale doesn't always translate
There is always the danger of becoming snared in the mire of misinterpretation when using synecdoche.
To take rusholmeruffian's comment to task, Silicon Valley's geographical reference is largely Santa Clara county (the cities of San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale being almost self-identified with the term), less so the peninsula county of San Mateo, even less so the city of San Francisco (which is entirely coterminous with San Francisco county), and far less so Contra Costa county (which contains the city of Walnut Creek.)
But that being said, it's largely those people who live there, or otherwise have a good understanding of sociogeography who would bother to persevere with the claim.
I don't think you'll find
I don't think you'll find out the location of the swiss financiers without a few decades of concerted and organized international pressure.
Zurich
When referring to the Swiss, the old fallback is 'gnomes' as in 'the Gnomes of Zurich'. Instead of a stereotyped location, a full blown stereotype. For any of the Scandinavian stock exchanges, use 'trolls', as in 'the Trolls of Stockholm', etc.
What about Geneva?
I'll be traveling to Geneva Switzerland soon. What type of mythical creature might I find there?
Tripp
In Canada it's Bay Street
In Canada it's Bay Street
F/U to Bay Street
To expand on the last comment regarding Canada - Bay Street is a street in downtown Toronto, currently the financial centre of Canada. The lower parts of Bay Street include Toronto's financial district. Hence the metonymic "Bay Street" when talking about the gnomes of Toronto. (Bay Street is also used to refer to tag members of Toronto's major corporate law firms, as in "She works at a Bay Street law firm.")
Back in the '60s, didn't
Back in the '60s, didn't some British pol call Swiss bankers "The Gnomes of Zurich." That one stuck for awhile, and is certainly a more colorful phrase than "Wall Street."
We definitely need to keep this industry centralized
We definitely need to keep this industry centralized so the unruly mob knows which subway stop to get off at. Careful, don't get your pitchfork tangled up in the turnstile!
In Germany
it's Mainhatten for Frankfurt am Main...
More followup to "Bay Street".
Canada also uses "Banker's Corner" to refer to Bay and Yonge in Toronto. Three of Canada's tallest buildings are on three of its corners -- the building on the fourth used gold instead of aluminum for their energy-efficient windows and looks like an oversized triangular gold brick.
"Bay Street" is used exactly analogous to America's "Wall Street". When we complain about "Bay Street Politics", we don't really care where the money lives -- it refers to the power of the bankers and brokers.
In Canada, most of the banking power is concentrated in five oversized banks (Closer to four if the laughter when CIBC gets caught in every banking catastrophe to roll along is considered.) Recently I've started seeing "big six" in print, but nobody refers to the six out west.
Where is Banker's Corner?
Everything is right on about Bay Street. But since Bay and Yonge don't intersect, just curious of the cross street, my guess is King St.