Now capital is more mobile and the need for business to compromise with labor and cultivate local communities is steadily diminishing. And the move is accelerating. Even Japan expects to lose 800,000 manufacturing jobs before 2000. The same dramatic shift from manufacturing and raw materials to finance that helped create New York s new wave prosperity has vastly accelerated the mobility of capital of all kinds. Today wealth moves around the world at the speed of light. seeking the greatest possible short-term profits.
Gold has no fatherland.
At the moment much of this wealth pauses briefly in New York on its globe-girdling mission. It flows through the trading terminals and stock exchanges here, enriching all those with whom it comes into contact. Yet this new wealth does not need New York. Dependent only on electronic communications, the traders and brokers could operate from anywhere in the world. Many of them do.