Top 10 cities for a career in Finance

[bigbadwolf]

I'm not sure you can blame the decline of industrial Northern England and the Midlands on London's growth as a financial hub though.
Competition from cheap imports (the primary factor), nationalized industries becoming moribund, militant unions, the Tory governments approach to dealing with the above in the 80's and a lack of investment are the major factors in industrial decline.

The decline goes back much further -- at least a century. English culture has been against industry and engineering and oriented towards services like accounting, law, and brokering. A gentleman didn't get his hands dirty. Those who made money as manufacturers made sure their sons didn't follow -- they were educated to be toffs. During the inter-war years the rot could be disguised by Indian exports (India, needless to say, being a part of the British empire); Indian surpluses compensated for persistent British balance-of-payments deficits. It's in the post-WW2 era that the problems could no longer be disguised, with recurrent balance-of-payments crises and sterling devaluations. Reason they didn't occur during the Thatcher era was because of North Sea oil. It's this culture the Germans look at askance.

The New Labour government essentially papered over the cracks with public money during the boom years, rather then invest in the North and encourage specialist manufacturing to move in to the area.

It was tried before, during the '60s. Didn't work. The incoming Wilson government of 1964 announced a "white-hot revolution." The emphasis was on buying British; the irony was that even the "Buy British" stickers were made in Japan. That was the era when the government initiated projects like the Concorde (with the French).

As for the European approach to a financial hub. There may be some grumbling, tantrum throwing and deliberate attempts to screw things up from some parts of the political left and right in the EU - overall though any politician with sense can see that having a financial hub in London, is as important to EU growth as is an Industrial hub in Germany. After all more tax revenue lets the politicos in Brussels live on the high hog.

Yes, but the Europeans want the financial hub to be in London rather than, say, Frankfurt.

With something in the region of 500 million citizens in the EU, there is no reason why competing financial systems such as the hausbank versus the market based system can not thrive under an economic free market and further provide some economic hedging for downturns - Germany seems to have survived through the recession rather well.

I'm going off-topic but a big chunk of the reason why Germany is doing well is because much of the rest of Europe is doing poorly. Club Med sucks in German exports, and German surpluses were recycled to pay for Club Med deficits. Analogous to the symbiotic Chinese-US economic relationship.

The question is, does the EU have the willpower to put the squabbling aside and build a manufacturing, finance and science base that can rival China and India in the coming decades? That's something I don't think I can answer.

Again going off-topic but Nordic Europe will eventually splinter off from the EU. It's problem is demographic -- aging population, declining population.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

I just read this on NYT and I thought it fits the discussion here

Lack of Jobs in Southern Europe Frustrates the Young - NYTimes.com

The outrage of the young has erupted, sometimes violently, on the streets of Greece and Italy in recent weeks, as students and more radical anarchists protest not only specific austerity measures in flattened economies but a rising reality in Southern Europe: People like Ms. Esposito feel increasingly shut out of their own futures. Experts warn of volatility in state finances and the broader society as the most highly educated generation in the history of the Mediterranean hits one of its worst job markets.