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Le secrétaire américain au Trésor devrait annoncer mardi des facilités pour certains crédits à la consommation, afin de chercher à redynamiser l'économie des États-Unis, affirme le Wall Street Journal. Pour en lire plus...

La Réserve fédérale américaine (Fed) envisage de continuer à baisser son taux d'intérêt directeur et de mettre en place de nouvelles facilités de crédit, alors que les conditions des marchés financiers ont continué à se détériorer, affirme lundi le Wall Street Journal. Pour en lire plus...

Tokyo et Hong Kong ont reculé de plus de 5% après que la peur de la récession ait causé le plongeon de Wall Street à son plus bas niveau depuis cinq ans. Pour en lire plus...

La Bourse de New York plonge à ses plus bas niveaux depuis cinq après le sombre diagnostic de Réserve fédérale sur l'état de l'économie américaine. Pour en lire plus...

La banque américaine est en train de supprimer au moins 10 000 emplois supplémentaires, dans une tentative pour rétablir sa rentabilité, affirme vendredi le Wall Street Journal. Pour en lire plus...

Les places boursières de l'Asie-Pacifique emboîtent le pas à Wall Street, qui a terminé la journée en force, et entament la séance de vendredi avec enthousiasme. Pour en lire plus...

Selon le Wall Street Journal, un nouveau programme d'aide aux propriétaires devrait être révélé lors d'une conférence de presse aujourd'hui vers 14h00. Pour en lire plus...

La Bourse de New York vit encore des inquiétudes, notamment pour General Motors qui peine comme jamais sur les marchés. Le TSX a terminé dans le vert, suivant la hausse du pétrole. Pour en lire plus...

Big Apple starting to crumble Janet Whitman, Financial Post Published: Thursday, November 06, 2008 NEW YORK -- The Big Apple is losing its shine. After years of benefiting from consumer bingeing on everything from luxury lofts to US$99 hamburgers, New York is seeing a dramatic turn in its fortunes as Wall Street stumbles. Investment banks and other financial-services firms here have cut tens of thousands of high-wage jobs and many more pink slips still could be on the way as they grapple with the deepening credit crisis. This year's Wall Street bonus pool, which makes up the bulk of the pay for high-flying financial executives, is forecast to be chopped in half to US$16-billion. Businesses are already feeling the pinch. Revenue at some high-end Manhattan restaurants are down an estimated 20% this year and the once sizzling real-estate market is cooling fast. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said this week that the big drop in tax revenue collected from financial firms is forcing him to renege on planned US$400 property tax rebates for homeowners and to mull a 15% income tax hike. Economists said yesterday that the downturn could resemble New York's financial crisis in the early 1970s, when the city nearly went bankrupt and crime rates skyrocketed. "Compensation is going to be way down and that's going to weigh on restaurants and retailers and the housing market as well," said Mark Vitner, senior economist at Charlotte, N.C.-based bank Wachovia Corp. "We're going to have a very difficult climb back out of this. The recovery might begin in the middle of next year, but that just means things will stop getting worse." Mr. Vitner said it could take at least three years before New York starts to see strong growth and five years before the city gets back to normal. After the dot-com bust in 1999 and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, New York soon roared back, fueled by Wall Street's recovery. But the city can't depend on Wall Street this time around. "The flavour is different," said James Brown, a New York state Department of Labor regional analyst who focuses on New York City. "It's not clear how much growth we can expect from our financial sector in the next upturn. We don't know to what degree they may not be as profitable and able to lavish the same high salaries in the next boom as they have in the past booms." With the U.S. government looking to avoid sowing the seeds for a future financial crisis by cracking down on executive bonuses and limiting how much financial firms can wager, Wall Street's recovery could be slow. That's bad news for New York State, which depends on the financial sector for 20% of its revenue. The state already is facing its biggest budget gap in history, at US$47-billion over the next four years. The crisis last week prompted New York State Gov. David Paterson to ask U.S. Congress for billions of dollars in federal assistance. New York City has been particularly hard hit. For every Wall Street job another three or four will be lost in the city. Despite the doom and gloom, Mr. Bloomberg assured New Yorkers at a press briefing this week that the city wouldn't return "to the dark days of the 1970s when service cuts all but destroyed our quality of life." The mayor, who is seeking a third term to guide the city through the crisis, said New York is in much better fiscal shape than it was then and won't make the same mistakes. Still, he warned, it could be as many as five years before financial companies have to start paying city or state taxes again because of the half a trillion dollars in write-downs they have taken, which will offset future profits.

L'accalmie n'aura même pas duré une semaine. Jeudi matin, les marchés mondiaux renouaient avec la volatilité et les pertes, tout comme Wall Street l'a fait mercredi. Pour en lire plus...

Pas moins de 1800 institutions financières cotées pourraient dans les semaines à venir se faire connaître pour bénéficier du plan américain de recapitalisation des banques sur fonds publics, affirme lundi le Wall Street Journal. Pour en lire plus...

La banque américaine prévoit d'abolir plus de 3000 emplois en raison de la crise financière, affirme le Wall Street Journal. Pour en lire plus...

Ritz-Carlton condo project stalls in Vancouver Construction of one of Vancouver's most prestigious condominium projects has been halted, but the developer says design changes, and not the international credit crisis, are behind the move. Work halted on the Ritz-Carlton construction site on Friday, and crews did not return on Monday after the weekend, leaving a giant hole in the ground near the corner of West Georgia Street and Bute Street in the heart of Vancouver. Fifty per cent of the condominium units were reportedly pre-sold, but the building's developer Simon Lim, president of the Holborn Group, told CBC News financial concerns were not behind the decision to put the project on hold. According to Lim, the work was halted so some design changes can be made, and it made no sense to keep crews working, or to keep the sales office open while those changes were underway. Advertising signage around the construction site was missing on Tuesday and construction trailers had been removed from the site. About 50 per cent of the excavation for the foundation of the project had already been completed. The 60-storey tower, which twists 45 degrees as it rises, is an Arthur Erickson design. The design features a high-end Ritz-Carlton hotel on the lower floors and 123 luxury condos on the upper floors priced between $2.5 million and $10 million, with the penthouse priced at $28 million.

L'indice phare de la Bourse de Tokyo perd 11 % de sa valeur dans le sillage de Wall Street, qui a connu sa pire journée depuis 1987. La chute se poursuit en Europe. Pour en lire plus...

Le groupe bancaire espagnol Santander semblait dimanche soir sur le point de conclure un accord lui donnant le contrôle total de la banque américaine Sovereign, affaiblie par la crise des prêts immobiliers à risque, selon le site internet du Wall Street Journal. Pour en lire plus...

Le Big Three pourrait bien devenir le Big Two. Selon le New York Times et le Wall Street Journal, General Motors et Chrysler étudieraient la possibilité de fusionner pour affronter un marché de l'automobile en pleine crise. Des discussions auraient été entamées il y a plus d'un mois entre GM et Cerberus Capital Management, propriétaire de Chrysler. Des sources bien au fait de ces discussions préliminaires ont dit au New York Times que la possibilité qu'elles se traduisent par une fusion des deux géants de l'automobile est de 50 %. Le Wall Street Journal, de son côté, indique que les négociations ont été momentanément suspendues à cause de l'effondrement de la bourse. Aucun commentaire officiel n'a été émis de part et d'autre. Autrefois fleurissante, l'industrie automobile américaine, composée de GM, Ford et Chrysler, doit batailler depuis des années contre la compétition que lui font, au premier chef, les marques japonaises, tant à l'échelle internationale qu'aux États-Unis. Ainsi, GM a vu au fil du temps sa part du marché américain passée de 50 % à 22 %, selon la firme Autodata, tandis que Chrysler ne détiendrait plus que 11 % du marché. Les coûts élevés de l'essence, des gammes de véhicules mal adaptés à ces temps d'incertitude économique et le resserrement du crédit pour les acheteurs potentiels sont venus depuis peu corser une compétition déjà féroce. L'union du premier et du troisième plus grand constructeur américain donnerait naissance à une entité plus importante que Toyota, qui dépasse lui-même depuis peu GM. http://www.radio-canada.ca/nouvelles/Economie-Affaires/2008/10/11/001-Gm-Chrysler.shtml

Les marchés européens et asiatiques ont plongé vendredi dans ce qui ressemble de plus en plus à un krach boursier, paniqués par la chute de Wall Street. Pour en lire plus...

Les bourses asiatiques s'écroulaient de nouveau vendredi, paniquées par la chute de Wall Street, à quelques heures d'une réunion cruciale des grands argentiers du Groupe des Sept. Pour en lire plus...

Les Bourses souffrent, le TSX glisse de 550 points 6 octobre 2008 - 16h23 Agence France-Presse LaPresseAffaires.com De Wall Street à l'Europe en passant par l'Asie et par Toronto, les Bourses ont chuté lundi, effrayées par l'ampleur de la crise financière qui se propage sur le globe. Aux premières loges, le TSX a connu une sale journée et a subi une véritable dégelée durant les premières minutes des échanges alors qu'il a chuté 11% vers 10h40. Sur le coup de midi, l'indice vedette du parquet torontois perdait environ 6% mais la glissade continuait jusqu'à 8% vers 14h30 lundi. Le TSX a finalement clôturé à 10 230 points en baisse de 5,3% ou 573 points. La Bourse de Toronto suivait le fort mouvement baissier du pétrole qui descendait lui aussi de 4,55 $ pour atteindre 89,33 $ US à New York vers 13h. «C'est la panique générale. Tout le monde espérait après l'adoption du «plan Paulson» aux États-Unis et les opérations de sauvetage en Europe que les choses se calmeraient. Mais en réalité, il y a toujours des craintes d'effet domino», a déclaré Adrian van Tiggelen, stratégiste principal chez ING Investment à Amsterdam. Aux États-Unis, le Dow Jones a lâché 3,58% et le Nasdaq 4,34%. Selon les chiffres définitifs de clôture, le Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) a reculé de 369,88 points, à 9955,50 points. Alors qu'il n'était pas passé sous les 10 000 points depuis quatre ans, il est descendu en cours de séance jusqu'à 9525,32 points, soit une perte de près de 800 points. Le Nasdaq, à dominante technologique, a cédé 84,43 points, à 1862,96 points et l'indice élargi Standard & Poor's 500 3,86% (42,38 points), à 1056,85 points. La tendance avait été amorcée vendredi, quand Wall Street avait fini en baisse malgré le vote et la promulgation du plan de sauvetage du système financier américain. En Europe et en Asie, le recul a été brutal. À Paris, le CAC 40 a aussi perdu 8,76%, le Nikkei 225 a terminé la séance en recul de 4,25%, à Londres le FTSE-100 a chuté de 6,31%, et à Francfort le DAX a glissé de 8,29%. En Russie, les échanges ont été interrompus trois fois lundi sur une des deux Bourses de Moscou, le Micex, qui s'effondrait de 18,66% au moment de l'interruption. L'autre indice moscovite, le RTS, s'écroulait de 19,10% à 10h15. Sao Paulo a pour sa part été suspendue à deux reprises après avoir plongé de plus de 15%. Le plan Paulson de sauvetage bancaire adopté par le Congrès américain vendredi «fait peu pour soulager la contraction du marché du crédit», car il «ne s'attaque pas directement aux problèmes de fond des marchés financiers, mais simplement aux conséquences de la crise», relevaient les analystes de BNP Paribas. S'ajoutaient à l'anxiété générale les déboires de la banque allemande Hypo Real Estate (HRE) en Allemagne, renflouée in extremis dimanche soir par le gouvernement et les autres banques allemandes grâce à un apport en liquidités de 50 milliards d'euros. Cela n'empêchait pas le cours de HRE de chuter de plus de 35% lundi à Francfort. Les difficultés de cette banque font craindre une propagation à l'ensemble du secteur bancaire européen alors que celui-ci connaît une phase de consolidation accélérée. La dernière étape en date est la prise de contrôle par la française BNP Paribas du bancassureur belgo-luxembourgeois Fortis, les États belges et luxembourgeois rentrant en retour au capital de la banque française. L'action de BNP Paribas perdait quand même 5% à Paris alors que Dexia sombrait de 25% malgré le plan de sauvetage annoncé par les autorités publiques françaises, belges et luxembourgeoises la semaine dernière. «Dexia a encore fait parler d'elle ce week-end en partie en raison de son exposition à Hypo Real Estate mais aussi car il y a encore des questions sur des besoins supplémentaires de financement», a indiqué Laurent Fransolet, de Barclays Capital à Londres. C'est sur le marché interbancaire que les tensions étaient toutefois toujours les plus palpables. Témoignant de la réticence des établissements financiers à se prêter de l'argent entre eux, le taux interbancaire à trois mois offert à Londres et exprimé en dollars (Libor) restait à un niveau exceptionnellement élevé, malgré une légère baisse à 4,2887% contre 4,3337% vendredi. L'Euribor à trois mois, l'un des principaux taux de référence du marché monétaire de la zone euro, montait quant à lui à 5,345% contre 5,339% vendredi, atteignant de nouveau un niveau historique pour le septième jour consécutif. «Ce dont nous avons vraiment besoin c'est d'une reprise du marché interbancaire. Si davantage de gouvernements européens annoncent des garanties de dépôts, cela pourrait être possible», indiquait Adrian van Tiggelen. L'ouverture de Wall Street était, dans un tel contexte, un nouveau facteur d'incertitude. «Les marchés américains décideront de la direction générale et beaucoup sont ceux qui espèrent un retournement après les pertes de vendredi», soulignait Ian Griffiths, courtier chez CMC Markets à Londres. «Ce sont les valeurs financières qui seront sous les feux de la rampe après les derniers développements en Allemagne et la poursuite des réactions au plan de sauvetage américain», estimait-il.

Alors que beaucoup d'investisseurs n'ont eu d'yeux que pour la crise du crédit et le plan de sauvetage de Wall Street au cours des dernières semaines, «il se passe quelque chose en coulisses», soutient Vincent Delisle, stratège chez Scotia Capitaux. Pour en lire plus...

La banque centrale américaine exerce de fortes pressions sur les banques Citigroup et Wells Fargo, pour les contraindre à un compromis sur l'avenir de leur concurrente Wachovia, avant que n'ouvrent les marchés, affirme dimanche le Wall Street Journal sur son site internet. Pour en lire plus...

End of an Era on Wall Street: Goodbye to All That By TIM ARANGO and JULIE CRESWELL Published: October 4, 2008 JUST before midnight 10 days ago, as a financial whirlwind tore through Wall Street, someone filched a 75-pound bronze bust of Harry Poulakakos from the vestibule of his landmark saloon on Hanover Square in Manhattan. Harry Poulakakos at his restaurant, which has been part of the Wall Street culture now being transformed by the financial crisis. “If Wall Street is not active,” he warned, “nothing is active.” Digging into a bowl of beef stroganoff the day after the bust disappeared — it was eventually returned anonymously — Mr. Poulakakos recalled some of the customers who had passed through his doors since he opened his bar, Harry’s, 36 years ago. Ivan Boesky once had a Christmas party there. Michael Milken worked over at 60 Broad. Tom Wolfe immortalized the joint in “The Bonfire of the Vanities.” Mr. Poulakakos says he even got to know Henry M. Paulson Jr., the former Goldman Sachs chief executive and now the Treasury secretary. Mr. Poulakakos, 70, has also seen his share of ups and downs on the Street, including the 1987 stock market crash, when Harry’s filled up at 4 p.m. and stayed open all night. But the upheaval he’s witnessing now — much of Wall Street evaporating in a swift and brutal reordering — is, he said, the worst in decades. “I hope this is going to be over,” he said. “If Wall Street is not active, nothing is active.” Mr. Poulakakos, rest assured, isn’t planning to disappear. But the cultural tableau and the social swirl that once surrounded Harry’s are certainly fading. “It’s the beginning of the end of the era of infatuation with the free market,” said Steve Fraser, author of “Wall Street: America’s Dream Palace,” and a historian. “It’s the end of the era where Wall Street carries high degrees of power and prestige. And it’s the end of the era of conspicuous displays of wealth. We are entering a new chapter in our history.” To be sure, living large and flaunting it are unlikely to exit the American stage, infused as they are in the country’s mojo. But with Congress having approved a $700 billion banking bailout, historians, economists and pundits are also busily debating the ways in which Wall Street’s demise will filter into the popular culture. It’s an era that traces its roots back more than two decades, when suspendered titans first became fodder for books and movies. It’s an era when eager young traders wearing khakis and toting laptops became dot-com millionaires overnight. And it is an era that roared into hyperdrive during the credit boom of the last decade, when M.B.A.’s and mathematicians raked in millions by trading and betting on ever more exotic securities. Over all, the past quarter-century has redefined the notion of wealth. In 1982, the first year of the Forbes 400 list, it took about $159 million in today’s dollars to make the list; this year, the minimum price of entry was $1.3 billion. As finance jockeyed with technology as economic bellwethers, job hunters, fortune seekers and the news media hopped along for the ride. CNBC became must-see TV on trading floors and in hair salons, while people gobbled up stories about private yachts, pricey jets and lavish parties, each one bigger and grander than the last. Finance made enormous and important strides in these years — new ways to parse risk, more opportunities for businesses and individuals to bankroll dreams — but for the average onlooker the industry seemed to be one endless party. In 1989, tongues wagged when the 50th birthday celebration for the financier Saul Steinberg featured live models posing as Old Masters paintings. That bash was outdone last year, when Stephen A. Schwarzman, head of the private equity firm Blackstone, feted guests at a 60th birthday party boasting an estimated price tag of $5 million, video tributes and the singer Rod Stewart. “The money was big in the ’80s, compared to the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. Now it’s stunning,” said Oliver Stone, who directed the 1987 film “Wall Street” and is the son of a stockbroker. “I thought the ’80s would have been an end to a cycle. I thought there would be a bust. But that’s not what happened.” Now, with jobs, fortunes and investment banks lost, a cultural linchpin seems to be slipping away. “This feels very similar, historically, to 1929 and the emotions that filled the air in the months and years that followed the crash,” Mr. Fraser said. “There is a sense of extraordinary shock and astonishment, which is followed by a sense of rage, outrage and anger directed at the centers of finance.” A WALL STREET hotshot was in a real-estate quandary, and he wanted Barbara Corcoran to help him sort things out. “This is a finance guy making a ton of money and he was trying to decide whether he should sell the country home in Connecticut, the apartment here in the city or the 8,000-square-foot dream home in Oregon that he just finished,” recalled Ms. Corcoran, who has spent years selling high-end luxury properties to New York’s elite. Daintily pulling the shell off a soft-boiled egg at a busy restaurant, she said she had fielded call after call from anxious Wall Streeters trying to decide between signing contracts on multimillion-dollar properties or renegotiating because of the downturn. (Renegotiate, she advises.) Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This Image Mark Lennihan/Associated Press Limos lined up at the Lehman Brothers headquarters, pre-bankruptcy. Enlarge This Image Carl T. Gossett/The New York Times The New York Stock Exchange on New Year’s Eve, 1971, in the innocent days before the Gordon Gekko’s arrived, before the 1987 crash and before the credit crisis tarnished the second Gilded Age. But this particular financier, whom Ms. Corcoran declined to identify, was interested in unloading property so he could time the absolute tippy-top of the real-estate market, not because his wallet had thinned. “He decided to list the country home in Connecticut,” Ms. Corcoran said, shrugging as she bit into her egg. If there has been one thing that has kept pace with the outsize personas on Wall Street, it’s the gigantic paychecks they’ve hauled in. Since the mid-1980s, top traders, bankers, hedge fund managers and private equity gurus have reeled in millions of dollars in rotten years and tens and hundreds of millions — a handful even making billions — while the good times rolled. For instance, Steven A. Cohen, a high-profile hedge fund manager who leads SAC Capital Advisors, spent more than $14 million in 1998 for his 30-room mansion in Greenwich, Conn. Then he spiffed up the place with a basketball court, an indoor pool, an outdoor skating rink — with its own Zamboni — a movie theater and showpieces from the art collection on which he has spent hundreds of millions in recent years. So it’s unlikely that hedge fund stars like Mr. Cohen are headed for the bread lines. Two weeks ago, as Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, Bank of America rescued Merrill Lynch, and regulators and bankers anxiously tried to figure out how to save the Street from itself, the world’s affluent plunked down more than $200 million in a two-day auction in London, snapping up the latest works by the British artist Damien Hirst. Still, some will inevitably downsize. “The yacht is probably the first thing to go,” said Jonathan Beckett, in a telephone interview from Monte Carlo as he attended the annual Monaco Yacht Show last month. Mr. Beckett, the chief executive of Burgess, a yacht broker, said that for the past eight years there have been few sellers in the market. That is starting to change, said Mr. Beckett, who noted that a handful of yachts had been put up for sale, ranging in price from $10 million to $150 million. Even party time has shortened. “In the last couple of weeks, since the bottom fell out of the market, we’ve seen people become more reticent to sign commitments for some expensive venues,” said Joseph Todd St. Cyr, director of Joseph Todd Events, which plans weddings and bar and bat mitzvahs for clients whom he describes as nonshowy, sophisticated Park Avenue types. “I had one client who was ready to book the Plaza for a wedding, but now he wants to know what are his other options and whether the Plaza will back down on its minimum spending requirement, which runs about $80,000 to $100,000 for a prime Saturday night date,” Mr. St. Cyr said. “Bar and bat mitzvahs in this town had become a little bit of a show. There’s a little bit of outdoing the Joneses and the Cohens,” he added, noting that typical parties, if devoid of appearances by N.F.L. superstars or the Black Eyed Peas, range from $150,000 to $400,000. Even though some clients may not have been hurt in the downturn, they simply don’t want to have an overly ostentatious party in this environment, he said. SHOWY homes are also on the block. Joseph M. Gregory, Lehman’s president and chief operating officer who was replaced in June, a couple of months before the firm filed for bankruptcy, listed his oceanfront, 2.5-acre, eight-bedroom Bridgehampton home for $32.5 million this summer. Mr. Gregory could not be reached for comment. While brokers say they have yet to see an avalanche of high-end sales, they do say that upheaval is present in the minds of buyers. Once a hamlet for the moneyed old guard, Greenwich has found itself in recent years overrun by flashy hedge fund and private equity managers. But with the markets in flux, some high-end homes with price tags as high as $3 million to $8 million that sat unsold for six months or longer are now being offered as rentals, said Barbara Wells, a local Realtor. “I had a rental on the market for $11,500 a month. On Monday, we got an offer for $8,500, which we countered with $9,500. They came back with $8,000,” she said. “I told them they were going the wrong way but they said, because of what was happening in the financial markets, this is our new offer. And guess what? The owner accepted it.” Also shocking, she said, is the fact that some of the new homes offered for rent were houses built on spec. In all likelihood, the real estate market could be frozen for the next 6 to 18 months or so as buyers and sellers struggle to reach agreement on prices, Ms. Corcoran said. “The buyers have jumped to the sidelines and the sellers refuse to budge on their prices, completely in a state of disbelief that anything has changed,” she said. Job losses and lower bonuses are likely to hurt sales of apartments in New York, particularly starter abodes like studios, one bedrooms and basic two bedrooms. “The lowest-priced properties are always hit hardest first and recover last,” said Ms. Corcoran, who estimates that 20 to 25 percent of apartment buyers in the city work on Wall Street. “The rich have more wiggle room.” Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This Image Neal Boenzi/The New York Times, top; Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times Michael R. Milken, top, in 1978, and Ivan F. Boesky, bottom, in 1987. The two men, both of whom went to prison, became symbols of Wall Street’s excesses. Enlarge This Image Janet Durrans for The New York Times The Greenwich, Conn., mansion of Steven A. Cohen. After buying it in 1998, he added amenities befitting a hedge fund king, like an outdoor skating rink. Despite the malaise, she says she sees some hope. “This feels like 1987,” after the stock market crashed, she declared. “It’s not even close to ’73 or ’74, when people used to feel sorry for you if you told them you lived in New York City.” That said, Ms. Corcoran said that data she once compiled showed that apartment prices in New York had peaked in 1988, one year after the ’87 crash, and taken 11 years to recover. Of course, there’s another much-watched barometer of Wall Street buoyancy: traffic at some of the city’s high-end strip clubs. During the heyday of the Wall Street boom in the 1990s, Lincoln Town Cars, Rolls-Royces and Bentleys were often found idling outside places like Scores. Inside, according to people who were present at the time, groups of brokers routinely dropped $50,000 and even $100,000 in a single night. In the “presidential suite” at Scores, with its own wine steward who delivered $3,200 bottles of Champagne, the tabs grew quickly. While dancers may not receive gifts like the ones once lavished upon them — say, a $10,000 line of credit at Bloomingdale’s or a pair of $125,000 earrings — the clubs still appear to be filled with brokers, bankers and foreign businessmen. On a recent night at Rick’s Cabaret in New York, men in suits and ties were in full force. At around 10 p.m. — early for a strip club — 10 of the club’s 11 private rooms on the second floor were booked. “Men will never grow tired of the high-class strip-club experience,” said Lonnie Hanover, a spokesman for Rick’s Cabaret International in New York. Rick’s, which is publicly traded on the Nasdaq and has 19 clubs across the country, even plans to expand. “When times are tough, there is no better form of escapism than a night at a gentlemen’s club,” he added. IN the early 1980s, Mr. Stone (who gave the world Gordon Gekko and the “Greed is good” mantra in “Wall Street”) spent time in Miami doing research for his movie “Scarface” (with its cocaine-snorting gangster Tony Montana). When he returned to New York he noticed a shift in the city’s culture of high finance, a world he was familiar with from his childhood. While Wall Streeters weren’t packing guns, other similarities startled him. “What shocked me was I met all these guys who at a young age were making millions and they were acting like these guys in Miami,” Mr. Stone recalled. “There’s not much difference between Gordon Gekko and Tony Montana.” “Money was worshiped and continues to be worshiped,” Mr. Stone added. “Maybe that will change now.” Adoration of riches is hardly new, however. In the mid- to late 19th century, the Gilded Age — a term Mark Twain coined in 1873 — offered equally ostentatious displays of wealth and a broadening gulf between rich and poor. “In the Gilded Age, they built great, enormous palazzos in Newport that they lived in for six weeks a year,” said the historian John Steele Gordon, whose book, “An Empire of Wealth,” chronicles that era. “During the last 25 years, it’s certainly been a gilded age in the sense that enormous fortunes have been built up in an unprecedented way.” Part of Wall Street’s allure for the young and ambitious was that anyone — regardless of education or breeding — could hit it big and live like a kingpin. Consider, for instance, Jordan Belfort. In 1987, Mr. Belfort, then a down-on-his-luck former meat-and-seafood distributor, was standing outside an apartment building in Bayside, Queens, when a childhood acquaintance who worked on Wall Street pulled up in a Ferrari. “This was a guy who you never would have expected would be making this kind of money,” Mr. Belfort recalled in a recent telephone interview. “I was broke, broke, broke, down to my last $100.” Mr. Belfort hit the Street in the late 1980s, and he recounted his adventure last year in a book called “The Wolf of Wall Street,” which he published after serving almost two years in prison for securities fraud and stock manipulation. He recently finished a second installment, “Catching the Wolf of Wall Street,” to be released in February. When he first struck it rich, he followed a well-trodden path for Wall Street upstarts. “First thing I did was go out and buy a Jaguar,” he said. “Step One is you get the car. Step Two, you get a great watch. Then great restaurants, and then maybe a place in the Hamptons — a summer share with another broker.” Whatever the Street’s excesses, it did offer individuals and institutions reliable, sophisticated and often efficient ways to trade and invest, helping to spread some of the wealth. Markets were democratized as individuals who had never before bought a stock or bond dabbled in investing, even if that meant simply plunking down money in a mutual fund, or participating in their company 401(k) plans. New technologies and the ability to trade stocks cheaply opened the financial doors to more people. As home prices rose, meanwhile, homeowners were enticed to tap into their new wealth through home equity loans and then used that money to pay for their own version of a lavish lifestyle. DESPITE these gains in the middle class, though, the truly wealthy have pulled away from the pack. Not since the late 1920s, just before the 1929 market crash, has there been such a concentration of income among individuals and families in very upper reaches of the income spectrum, according to researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Paris School of Economics. Some say that anger over the yawning wealth divide found traction in the highly charged and polarizing debate in Congress over the bailout bill. Mr. Fraser, the historian, says that anger is informed by the de-industrialization of the American economy in recent decades. Factory closings and the loss of manufacturing jobs that paid decent, middle-class wages coincided with the heady expansion of the financial sector, where compensation soared. “That means that people in Ohio and Pennsylvania have not been living as high on the hog as those on Wall Street,” Mr. Fraser said. “There’s a real sense of anger at that unfairness.” Even if the current crisis leads to a prolonged slowdown, people may still flock to finance jobs. But they may have to recalibrate their expectations. “There’s no question that people on Wall Street are going to make less money,” said Jonathan A. Knee, a Columbia Business School professor and author of “The Accidental Investment Banker.” Like any cultural force concerned about its legacy, the financial world has a custodian of its past. On Wall Street, it can be found at the Museum of American Financial History, just a block from the New York Stock Exchange. Located in a grand space once occupied by the Bank of New York, it features a long timeline charting major market events. The last event it notes is the popping of the dot-com bubble earlier this decade. Robert E. Wright, a financial historian at New York University who is a curator of the museum, said that there were still many unknowns about how recent events would be recalled. “If the economic system shuts down and we go in for a deep recession, it probably is the end of an era,” he said. Hedging its bets, the museum has already started collecting mementos from the current crisis to post on its wall.

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