Wall Street's Relocation Worries Return

Up until Tuesday, the idea of moving Wall Street out of New York seemed as nonsensical as relocating Hollywood to Nebraska.

Sure, there have always been advantages to moving out of whatever big city in which an industry might be concentrated. But those are usually outweighed by the need for and convenience of working in close proximity to related businesses.

In the aftermath of the World Trade Center disaster, however, many survivors in the financial industry are likely to re-evaluate the systems and traditions that concentrate them in Lower Manhattan. And that, in turn, could revive previously rejected ideas for greater decentralization of the U.S. financial markets --turning the New York Stock Exchange's trading floor into a historical artifact. ...