1985 SPECIAL REPORT: "WALL STREET CONNECTION"
The Reagan years were marked by a renewed push for capitalism and business, with national efforts to de-regulate industries such as telecommunications and aviation. The economy resumed upward growth after a period in the early 1980s of languishing.
A report in The New York Times described that the flushness of money and growth during these years had spawned a drug culture of sorts, with a rampant acceptance of cocaine use although the overall percent of actual users was most likely small. A reporter wrote:
The Wall Street drug dealer looked like many other successful young female executives. Stylishly dressed and wearing designer sunglasses, she sat in her 1983 Chevrolet Camaro in a no-parking zone across the street from the Marine Midland Bank branch on lower Broadway.
The customer in the passenger seat looked like a successful young businessman. But as the dealer slipped him a heat-sealed plastic envelope of cocaine and he passed her cash, the transaction was being watched through the sunroof of her car by Federal drug agents in a nearby building. And the customer — an undercover agent himself -was learning the ways, the wiles and the conventions of Wall Street’s drug subculture.
— Peter Kerr in The New York Times, 1987.
In 1987, the stock market plunged, and, in the relatively brief recession following, the surrounding area lost 100,000 jobs according to one estimate.
Since telecommunications costs were coming down, banks and brokerage firms could move away from the Financial District to more affordable locations.
One of the firms looking to move away was the NYSE. In 1998, the NYSE and the city struck a $900 million deal which kept the NYSE from moving across the river to Jersey City; the deal was described as the “largest in city history to prevent a corporation from leaving town”. #wallstreet
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