Floor traders, hamburgers, and bowling balls

Newsweek has an interesting (albeit short) piece on what will happen to Wall Street (residential properties?!?!) as well as specialists after the NYSE merges with archipelago.

Just a Street? - Newsweek Business - MSNBC.com:

My favorite part:

Thain (the CEO of the NYSE) to a group NYSE floor traders:
"'You can walk out the door and get a job at McDonald's,'' noting those who add value to the new NYSE will survive. Wall Street types are fond of gallows humor, so a floor broker spent $200 at McDonald's and passed out hamburgers at lunch as traders talked about Thain's remarks and discussed their future. (Thain, through a spokesman, did not deny the account.)"

Ouch....

Later in the same article:

"In a sense, it's slipped already, as many of the nation's top brokerage firms have moved operations from the financial district to midtown and New Jersey. Morgan Stanley, which employed 1,300 brokers in the World Trade Center, relocated most of them to Westchester. Goldman Sachs, which has more space in lower Manhattan than any other employer and had been planning a new headquarters near Ground Zero, recently said it would look for space elsewhere. Jeffrey Liddle, a prominent employment attorney, has noticed the shift as many clients have left the city. "It's only a matter of time before Wall Street becomes an idea rather than a location,'' "

Which fits our in class "bowling alley" metaphor pretty well!