Economic power in New-York

Places and forms of power

I'm going to talk about the notion of places and forms of power.

First and foremost, I would like to give a definition of what power is. Power takes several forms, it's a force exerted by someone or something in order to control or bear influence.

In the light of this definition, I wish to concentrate on a specific type of power epitomised by the city of New-York, so we will ask ourselves how New-York is characterized by the economic power and what are his limits ?

To do so, my presentation is twofold

First, I would like to focus on the seats of power present in New-York city. Then in a second part, I will turn my attention to the limits of this form of power.

To illustrate this notion, I have chosen two documents studied in class: a text about the New-York Stock Exchange and a cartoon about a financial crisis.

Let's focus on the seats of power in N-Y. While the political and judicial powers are settled in Washington D.C (with the White House, the US Congress and the Supreme Court), it's in N-Y that we find most of the economic and financial powers. In N-Y, the finance industry represents 13% of all jobs and generates 36% of its profit. Indeed, many world companies like transnational companies have their seats in N-Y-C it's the case of Time Warner, N-Y Times or American Express, 3 transnational companies among the richest in the world. It's also in N-Y-C that we find the American Stock Exchange, one of the most powerfull and influential Stock Exchange in the world.

We also studied a text in which we discover that the fusion between the New-York Stock Exchange with the Euronext gave birth to the most important platform of stocks with more than 15.000 billions euros of capitalisation.

Secondly, let's talk about the limits of this economic power. However paradoxical it may seem, what makes of N-Y-C a powerfull city, is also the very source of its fragility. Indeed, it's in N-Y that underwent the 2 biggest financial crashes in the world history, precisely in 1929 with the Black Week and in 2008 when the financial market collapsed and banks went bankrupted.

The cartoon studied in class showed the consequences of the first crisis with 16.000 companies had close down with around 13.000 jobs lost.

Also we have all in mind the 9/11 terrorist attack on the Twin Towers (The WTC : World Trade Center). They were the target of the terrorists because they stood as icons of the city's financial power. So besides the loss of human lives( 2977 person were injured), their destruction was highly symbolical. The goal of the terrorist was to grab people's attention by hit the biggest economic state.

To conclude we can say that lot of reason that we have ssen had made the economic power of New-York but there's anymay some limits.

Today, 16 years after 9/11 terrorist attacks still represent a major threat to the city,but it is worth noticing that where was « Ground Zero », there is now a memorial and a transportation hub so N-Y continues to be a thriving and an economic city.

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