Wall Street is a street in Lower Manhattan and, more broadly, the name for the American financial system centered there: the stock exchanges, investment banks, and traders through which companies and governments raise money and securities are bought and sold. Since the late eighteenth century it has been the main marketplace where the nation's savings are channeled into enterprise, and it has become a byword for both the power and the excesses of high finance.
The street is barely half a mile long. It runs from the graveyard of an old church down to the East River, and a person can walk its whole length in minutes. Yet a bad morning on this one narrow block can wipe out the savings of people who will never see it, in countries its traders could not find on a map. Few places on earth are so small and reach so far. That is the paradox of Wall Street: a lane you could pass without noticing, wired to the fortunes of the entire world.