I can testify to the allure of Wall Street. During the 1990s, I was based in Washington DC and covering the American economy for the Financial Times. There was no sense in trying to write about the US economy without paying close attention to Wall Street investment banks, so, like other economics correspondents, I often took the shuttle to New York. I would exchange gossip – and occasionally hard data – with economists and analysts at institutions such as J P Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and Merrill Lynch.

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