Friday, March 20, 2009

Some 'Other' Wall Streets Embarrassed

"This is the real Wall Street,' says Mark Rosenstein, chef/proprietor of the Market Place restaurant on Wall Street (the one in Asheville, N.C.).



"If I ran this restaurant like the bankers ran their business, I would no longer have a job," says Celinda Knight, manager of the Wall Street Bar & Grill, on East Wall Street in Midland, Texas, childhood home of former President George W. Bush.

That is probably what infuriates people more than anything else: the double standard. That they get bailed out with our money is also infuriating.

Anger over runaway trading, financial engineering and compensation by financial companies has a strong resonance along at least 955 country roads, suburban streets and downtown blocks named Wall Street or something close to that. From Abilene, Texas, to south Los Angeles to Zeeland, Mich., these residents and business are wrestling both with the recession and the ignominy of a truly fallen address. (Never mind that most Wall Street financial firms aren't literally located on Wall Street, nor is The Wall Street Journal.)

"My father's always joked: 'My daughter works on Wall Street,'" says Robin Campbell, owner of Dolce Vita, an eclectic boutique halfway on Asheville's Wall Street that is stocked with handbags, earrings and wine. "Now he doesn't joke about that."

On Wall Streets throughout the country, the dominant view is that their New York cousins deserve their ruined reputation.

There is such a disconnect between normal people and financiers. Politicians straddle the two worlds, getting money from the latter, votes from the former.
As much as people on "other" Wall Streets want to distance themselves from the one known around the world, they can't escape its economic reach. In January, Asheville's unemployment rate hit 8.7%, up from 4.4% a year earlier. Tourism, the area's most important business, is slowing. Once-red-hot mountain real-estate developments are dormant.

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