And IMHO these are the values of Donald Trump.

That was not an insighful comment. -1 for being naive and pretending that the financial 'industry' is not a cartel that produces little but misery by stealing from everyone who is productive..Relish.

Personally - and it is personal - NYC is too much city for me. But it is not as you painted it. My brother lived there for 30 years. He called it "the biggest small town in America." He knew his neighbors and they knew him and his family. When the kid grew up and looked for work, he had neighborhood cred with the restaurant and deli. It did the kid well, also, when he looked for his own apt when he got married. New York City is like any other place on Earth in that it is whatever you make of it. And, again, like you, I found it a bit much. And if push came to shove, I have also lived (twice) in farming villages in the midwest. Cute as they are, they lack museums, universities, hospitals - and we owned more books than their libraries. So, (allow me to repeat), while I do not live in The City, I do live in a city.

OR...it was handled poorly because DeBlasio is an incompetent mayor.

completely disagree. Finance still exists without invention. It will just move between existing choices. It takes invention to widen the field and create net new jobs. It all starts with invention.http://www.amazon.com/Source-Economic-Growth...

I have been a tourist in NYC in January. The city does not get that much weather. It has a bubble of heat over it that pushes weather away. Usually, they gather the snow, put it on barges and dump it in the ocean. This was just a lot more snow. NYC handled it; WDC not so much.

You were doing better above, Carl. The two do have different mentalities, different cultures. They are not at all to the same effects, though. As you say, one does, the other undoes. "Un-doing" is saying a lot: not only to they take apart what others have created, their efforts are an "anti-production". NYC is not like that at all. Yes, they have a mayor and school system and all that, but those institutions are not the defining one. Every city has them. NYC is more than the financial hub of America, but it is that.

Not many people - even here - earn an independent income from buying and selling fiduciary paper, so not many people understand it. We understand why LeBron James is paid well because we all know that we suck at basketball because we play it. We spend hours watching football. We do not spend hours watching the Standard and Poor, cheering with our buddies, running to the kitchen for Red Bulls...

That was not an insighful comment. -1 for not examining the unquestioned premises. In a complex society, a civilzation - literally a city culture - every job is important or it would not exist. That said, finance is probably the most important industry because it is the engine that drives the others. No bucks, no Buck Rogers.

It is true that Goldman-Sachs was bailed out, while Bear Sterns was not. We can condemne the corrupt bargain. However, NYC is more than one or two big firms.

"FINRA is the largest independent regulator for all securities firms doing business in the United States. We oversee nearly 4,430 brokerage firms, 162,155 branch offices and 629,530 registered securities representatives. Our chief role is to protect investors by maintaining the fairness of the U.S. capital markets." -- http://www.finra.org/investors/broker...

NYC does more than "something" and the culture of finance does more that "might create some value." Your comment reflects an untested assumption from the common culture that investment and speculation are not really productive work. That is an anti-capitalist viewpoint and it is easy to find, even here in the Gulch. Cultural conservatives venerated farmers and denigrated bankers for thousands of years.

You are not alone in your misperception of NYC as not being productive. Finance is the highest form of production. It is the engine of creation. The old, traditional view - shared even by both Adam Smith and the Austrians - is that you build a better mousetrap, take money from savings, and open a shop to produce them. The "yeoman inventor" hallmarks an early phase: Silicon Valley as "three guys in a garage." But you cannot produce millions like that. For that, you need venture capital investment: speculators.

Our common culture denigrates speculation. Your comment is perfect example of that. Capitalism takes it on the chin every time, even here.

We all rely on the city to do the snow removal - but only in the larger sense. In point of fact, hundreds of guys with trucks put plow blades on them every autumn to do contract work for private firms that do not get free city snow removal for their parking lots.

Again, see above to Puzzlelady: cities do not grow their own food, but they do not starve in the winter. WDC could have contracted all kinds of workers. NYC did that, paying anyone $13.50 an hour to shovel snow from bus stops, etc.

That was my thought: the king (Knut / Canute of England) commanding the sea in order to show his vassals how powerless he truly was.

They do not grow their own food in Washington DC either, but they seem to have enough of it when they want it. I mean: on the market, you buy what you need. Knowing that the storm was coming, they could have hired the equipment they needed. Boston actually volunteered theirs free to any other city that needed it - assuming that Boston would not.

Go ahead, guys. Decree that it is not to snow.

That's what I meant by "opposites of the same side of the coin" Different mentality in each city but both to the same effects...One does and the other undoes...

Hard to beat NYC for the live music.

Financial "industry" in NYC are possibly the only bigger thieves than the Dark Center.

You know...on second hand...your right, however,
my point was that NYC actually does something and the financial and corporate culture might create some value; But DC...takes away value...no matter how bad they each are or not, they are still opposites on the same side of the coin.

Agree completely on the current state of NYC. Looters Central. It gets great propaganda as the city of cop tv shows. Another reason not to watch tv.

How does Western Digital Corp respond to snow?