“When the walls came down, and the windows came up.”
 
Thomas Friedman in his book “World Is Flat”
 
According to the author, the event not only symbolized the end of the cold War, it allowed people from other side of the wall to join the economic mainstream. “11/9/89 is a discussion about the Berlin Wall coming down, the “fall” of communism, and the impact that Windows powered PCs (personal computers) had on the ability of individuals to create their own content and connect to one another.
 
Berlin Wall
 
For 30 years, the Berlin Wall was the defining symbol of the Cold War (symbol of Communism), separating East and the West Germany. The Berlin Wall existed between 1961 and 1989, constructed by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off (by land) West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin until it was opened in 1989. The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, which circumscribed a wide area that contained anti-vehicle trenches and other defences. The Eastern Bloc claimed that the wall was erected to protect its population from fascist elements conspiring to prevent the "will of the people" in building a socialist state in East Germany. In practice, the Wall served to prevent the massive emigration and defection that marked East Germany and the communist Eastern Bloc during the post-World War II period.
 
BACKGROUND - THE BERLIN WALL: THE PARTITIONING OF BERLIN
 
As World War II came to an end in 1945, a pair of Allied peace conferences at Yalta and Potsdam determined the fate of Germany’s territories. They split the defeated nation into four “allied occupation zones”: The eastern part of the country went to the Soviet Union, while the western part went to the United States, Great Britain, and France.
 
On August 13, 1961, the Communist government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany) began to build a barbed wire and concrete “Antifascistischer Schutzwall,” or “antifascist bulwark,” between East and West Berlin. The official purpose of this Berlin Wall was to keep Western influences from entering East Germany and undermining the socialist state, but it primarily served the objective of stemming mass defections across East and West. The Berlin Wall stood until November 9, 1989 when the head of the East German Communist Party announced that citizens could cross the border whenever they pleased. To this day, the Berlin Wall remains one of the most powerful and enduring symbols of the Cold War.

THE BERLIN WALL: 1961-1989
 
The construction of the Berlin Wall did stop the flood of refugees from East to West, and it did defuse the crisis over Berlin. Over time, East German officials replaced the makeshift wall with one that was sturdier and more difficult to scale. A 12-foot-tall, 4-foot-wide mass of reinforced concrete was topped with an enormous pipe that made climbing over nearly impossible. Behind the wall on the East German side was a so-called “Death Strip”: a gauntlet of soft sand (to show footprints), floodlights, vicious dogs, trip-wire machine guns and patrolling soldiers with orders to shoot escapees on sight.
 
According to some reports, at least 171 people were killed trying to get over, under or around the Berlin Wall. Escape from East Germany was not impossible, however: From 1961 until the wall came down in 1989, more than 5,000 East Germans (including some 600 border guards) managed to cross the border by jumping out of windows adjacent to the wall, climbing over the barbed wire, flying in hot air balloons, crawling through the sewers and driving through unfortified parts of the wall at high speeds.

THE BERLIN WALL: THE FALL OF THE WALL
 
In 1989, a series of radical political changes occurred in the Eastern Bloc, associated with the liberalization of the Eastern Bloc's authoritarian systems and the erosion of political power in the pro-Soviet governments in nearby Poland and Hungary. After several weeks of civil unrest, the East German government announced on 9 November 1989 that all GDR citizens could visit West Germany and West Berlin.
 
Crowds of East Germans crossed and climbed onto the wall, joined by West Germans on the other side in a celebratory atmosphere. Over the next few weeks, excited public chipped away parts of the wall; the governments later used industrial equipment to remove most of what was left. The wall's actual demolition did not begin until Summer 1990 and was not completed until 1992.According to reports, more than a million people from East Berlin visited West Berlin that weekend to participate in a celebration which was described as, “the greatest street party in the history of the world.” Soon the wall was gone and Berlin was united for the first time since 1945.  The fall of the Berlin Wall paved the way for German reunification, which was formally concluded on 1990.

WALL STREET
 
If Berlin wall was the symbol of communism, Wall Street is the symbol of modern capitalism

Introduction
 
Wall Street is the home of the New York Stock Exchange(in Lower Manhattan), the world's largest stock exchange by overall average daily trading volume and by total market capitalization of its listed companies. Over time, the term has become a synonymous for the financial markets of the United States as a whole and the American financial sector (even if financial firms are not physically located there). Several other major exchanges have or had headquarters in the Wall Street area, including Nasdaq, the New York Mercantile Exchange, the New York Board of Trade, and the former American Stock Exchange. Anchored by Wall Street, New York City has been called the world's principal financial center.In these early days, local merchants and traders would gather at disparate spots to buy and sell shares and bonds, and over time divided themselves into two classes—auctioneers and dealers. Wall Street was also the marketplace where owners could hire out their slaves by the day or week.
 
Background
 
On December 13, 1711, the New York City Common Council made Wall Street the city's first official slave market for the sale and rental of enslaved Africans and Indians. In the late 18th century, there was a buttonwood tree at the foot of Wall Street under which traders and speculators would gather to trade securities. The benefit was being in proximity to each other. In 1792, traders formalized their association with the Buttonwood Agreement which was the origin of the New York Stock Exchange. The idea of the agreement was to make the market more organised and without the manipulative auctions with a commission structure. Persons signing the agreement agreed to charge each other a standard commission rate persons, not signing could still participate but would be charged a higher commission for dealing.
 
In 1789, Wall Street was the scene of the United States' first presidential inauguration when George Washington took the oath of office on the balcony of Federal Hall on April 30, 1789. This was also the location of the passing of the Bill Of Rights. In the cemetery of Trinity Church, Alexander Hamilton, who was the first Treasury secretary and "architect of the early United States financial system," is buried.
 
It is generally considered that the start of the 20th century period to have been Wall Street's heyday. According to some view, the street was "the precise center, geographical as well as metaphorical, of financial America and even of the financial world."
 
Symbol of Status- Wall Street the “Tall Street”
 
Wall Street in a conceptual sense represents financial and economic power. To Americans, it can sometimes represent elitism and power politics, and its role has been a source of controversy throughout the nation's history, particularly beginning around the Gilded Age period in the late 19th century. Wall Street became the symbol of a country and economic system that many Americans see as having developed through trade, capitalism, and innovation.
 
According to some reports, there is a general belief among   the members of high finance (say Bankers and other financial experts) that working for Wall Street puts them at the top of the hierarchical ladder in society. They feel that everything goes through Wall Street, in terms of loans, investments, change or growth. From their point of view, Wall Street values are embedded in power. According to experts who have done studies on the Wall Street Culture, there is a general belief among the members of Wall Street that, there is a “dividing line between ‘us on the inside’ and ‘those on the outside’”. These factors strengthen the power relations as well as establish a hierarchy between them as Wall Street employees and the public.
 
Wall Street is a major location of tourism in New York City. One report described lower Manhattan as "swarming with camera-carrying tourists". Tour guides highlight places such as Trinity Church, the Federal Reserve gold vaults 80 feet below street level (worth $100 billion), and the NYSE.
 
Wall Street to Fall Street
 
Wall Street has had changing relationships with government authorities. In 1913, for example, when authorities proposed a $4 tax on stock transfers, stock clerks protested. At other times, city and state officials have taken steps through tax incentives to encourage financial firms to continue to do business in the city.
 
The stock market crash of 1929 ushered in the Great Depression in which a quarter of working people were unemployed, mass foreclosures of farms, and falling prices. During this era, development of the financial district stagnated, and Wall Street "paid a heavy price" and "became something of a backwater in American life. During the New Deal years as well as the 1940s, there was much less focus on Wall Street and finance. The government clamped down on the practice of buying equities based only on credit, but these policies began to ease. From 1946-1947, stocks could not be purchased "on margin", meaning that an investor had to pay 100% of a stock's cost without taking on any loans. But this margin requirement was reduced four times before 1960, each time stimulating a mini-rally and boosting volume, and when the Federal Reserve reduced the margin requirements from 90% to 70%. These changes made it somewhat easier for investors to buy stocks on credit. The growing national economy and prosperity led to a recovery during the 1960s, with some down years during the early 1970s in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Trading volumes climbed; in 1967, according to reports, volume hit 7.5 million shares a day which caused a "traffic jam" of paper with "batteries of clerks" working overtime to "clear transactions and update customer accounts."
 
When the World Trade Center was destroyed on September 11, 2001, it left an architectural void as new developments since the 1970s had played off the complex aesthetically. The attacks "crippled" the communications network. One estimate was that 45% of Wall Street's "best office space" had been lost. The physical destruction was immense. Still, the NYSE was determined to re-open on September 17, almost a week after the attack. The attack hastened a trend towards financial firms moving to midtown and contributed to the loss of business on Wall Street, due to temporary-to-permanent relocation to New Jersey and further decentralization with establishments transferred to cities like Chicago, Denver, and Boston.
 
According to some experts, the exchange has become "inextricably intertwined into New York's economy". Wall Street pay, in terms of salaries and bonuses and taxes, is an important part of the economy of New York City, the tri-state metropolitan area, and the United States. In 2008, after a downturn in the stock market, the decline meant $18 billion less in taxable income, with less money available for "apartments, furniture, cars, clothing, and services". Thus a falloff in Wall Street's economy could have "wrenching effects on the local and regional economies".
 
The seven largest Wall Street firms in the 2000s were Bear Stearns, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup Incorporated, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers. During the recession of 2008–2010, many of these firms went out of business or were bought up by other financial firms. In 2008, Lehman filed for bankruptcy, Bear Stearns was bought by JP Morgan Chase and Merrill Lynch was bought by Bank of America. These failures marked a catastrophic downsizing of Wall Street as the financial industry went through restructuring and change. Since New York's financial industry provides almost one-fourth of all income produced in the city, and accounts for 10% of the city's tax revenues and 20% of the states, the downturn has had huge repercussions for government treasuries. The U.S. government with the Troubled Asset Relief Program bailed out the banks and financial backers with billions of taxpayer dollars, but the bailout was often criticized as politically motivated, and was criticized by journalists as well as the public.
 
Thus Wall Street which has become synonymous with financial interests, often used (quoted) negatively. During the subprime mortgage crisis from 2007–2010, Wall Street financing was blamed as one of the causes, although most commentators blame an interplay of factors.
 
Occupy Wall Street (OWS)
 
Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is the name given to a protest movement that began on September 17, 2011, in Zuccotti Park, located in New York City's Wall Street financial district, receiving global attention and spawning the Occupy movement against social and economic inequality worldwide. The main issues raised by Occupy Wall Street were social and economic inequality, greed, corruption and the perceived undue influence of corporations on government—particularly from the financial services sector. The OWS slogan, "We are the 99%", refers to income inequality and wealth distribution in the U.S. between the wealthiest 1% and the rest of the population. The protesters were forced out of Zuccotti Park on November 15, 2011. After several unsuccessful attempts to re-occupy the original location, protesters turned their focus to occupying banks, corporate headquarters, board meetings and college and university campuses. The media provided U.S. government documents which revealed that the through its various agencies the government had monitored Occupy Wall Street through its Joint Terrorism Task Force, despite labelling it a peaceful movement. The declassified documents showed extensive surveillance and infiltration of OWS-related groups across the country.
 
Despite all the debates and the crisis surrounding it the Wall Street still remains the most influential epicentre of global finance and economy.
 
Source:
Wikipedia
Reuters
-- Prof. M. Guruprasad, AICAR BUSINESS SCHOOL