Wall Street 'Socially Useless'

Britain’s top financial watchdog has said that Wall Street and other financial centers are mostly focused on “socially useless activity.” This week, John Cassidy unpacks that statement in The New Yorker. “Why on earth should finance be the biggest and most highly paid industry when it’s just a utility, like sewage or gas?” an economist asks Cassidy. While Wall Street often heralds itself as an engine of job creation, Cassidy says, “Wall Street’s role in financing new businesses is a small portion of what it does.” Goldman Sachs, for example, raked in 63 percent of its revenue between July and September from trading.