Wall Street

Wall Street

Wall Street. One of the world's most known streets.

1 Wall Street. On one of the world’s most expensive corners – 1 Wall Street and Broadway – architect Ralph Walker conceived his zig-zag Art Deco Skycraper for the Irving Trust Company as a “curtain wall” – not the typical sheet of glass hanging from a steel cage, but a limestone wall rippling like a curtain descending on a Broadway stage.Because of the curves in the wall, the bank doesn’t completely occupy its full building lot, and by law unoccupied and unmarked land reverts to the public – not too many square inches are left unused here, but each one is worth gold. So a slender metal line in the sidewalk makes clear who owns what. 1 Wall Street: Voorhees, Gmelin & Walker, Architects, 1928-1931.

The Wall Street entrance of 1 Wall Street leads into a dazzling, two-story banking hall whose ceiling sparkles in red and gold mosaics designed by Hildreth Meiere, rivaling the mosaics in the Golden Hall of Stockholm’s City Hall, and manufactured by the same company, the Ravenna Mosaic Company, in Berlin.

14 Wall Street. The Mausoleum of Halicarnassus piled on top of the bell-tower of St. Mark’s in Venice, at the corner of Wall and Broad – that’s the design concept behind 14 Wall Street. In its day the world’s tallest bank building, the 539-foot-high skyscraper originally housed the headquarters of Bankers Trust, one of the country’s wealthiest financial institutions.

14 Wall Street: Trowbridge & Livingston, Architects, 1910-1912. Addition: Sherve, Lamb & Harmon, Architects, 1931-1933. Many early skyscrapers took the Venetian bell-tower as a logical model for a modern office tower, but 14 Wall Street was the first to top it off with a temple in the sky, a seven-story stepped pyramid modeled on one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The bank the adopted the pyramid as its trademark, and took as its slogan “A Tower of Strength.”

Instantly a standard-bearer in the fabled Downtown skyline, 14 Wall Street went on to become a widely recognized symbol of Wall Street and American capitalism.

Wall Street Bull, the symbol of the most famous street in the world

Cipriani Society on Wall street

Express Row: The stretch of Broadway from Exchange Alley to Rector Street once housed the companies – like Adams Express, at 61 Broadway – that carried packages too heavy for the mails but too insubstantial for the railroads. American Express built 65 Broadway in 1917 (Renwick, Aspinwall & Tucker, architects). It was here in 1958 that, among its many other innovations, the company issued the first American Express credit cards.

A Wall street corner

A typical Wall Stree view.

Equinox, another famous fund and society

The Wall Street Exchange.

Liberty Place

A nice morning on Wall Street

A new modern-looking building on Wall Street

Our Lady of Victory Church on Wall Street

The Empire Building: The great, granite-faced, 20-story building at 71 Broadway (Kimball & Thompson, 1898) – narrow end on Broadway, broad end opposite Trinity Church – served as headquarters for U.S. Steel from its birth in 1901 until 1976.

Many early skyscrapers took the Venetian bell-tower as a logical model for a modern office tower.

The Trinity Church at the end of Wall Street

Corner of Wall street and William Street

The Mausoleum of Halicarnassus piled on top of the bell-tower of St. Mark’s in Venice, at the corner of Wall and Broad – that’s the design concept behind 14 Wall Street. In its day the world’s tallest bank building, the 539-foot-high skyscraper originally housed the headquarters of Bankers Trust, one of the country’s wealthiest financial institutions.

48 Wall Street: Benjamin Wistar Morris, Architect, 1927-1929.Museum of American Finance: What more appropriate home for the Museum of American Finance than the grand, 30-foot-high banking hall of the former Bank of New York building? The museum – an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution – is the only one of its kind in America. Effectively serving as the New York Stock Exchange`s de facto visitor`s center, the museum displays permanent interactive exhibits on finance, money, entrepreneurship and banking. These feature rare examples of Colonial currency; stock and bond certificates dating from the 18th century to the present; high denomination currency including $1,000, $5,000, and $10,000 bills; and hundreds of images of the financial district. The museum includes a room dedicated to Hamilton, founder of the bank and the country`s first Treasury Secretary. 

The Bank of New York – oldest bank in the city, founded in 1784 by Alexander Hamilton – commissioned a new headquarters (their third on this site) in 1927. The bank instructed architect Benjamin Wistar Morris to incorporate something of the institution`s Colonial history in the design. That history is evident inside the main banking hall, where eight murals by J. Monroe Hewlett illustrate the story of American commerce and the life of the Bank. Outside, the building`s major Colonial reference is meant to be seen from a distance: a tower reminiscent of an 18th-century church, but thirty stories up in the air – definitely the only Colonial tower in the Downtown skyline. 

There are two murals in the main banking hall: Foreign Trade shows a ship`s captain, manifest in hand, disembarking, while his ship is secured at the East River docks. National Credit 1861 symbolically represents the financial backing The Bank of New York lent the federal government during the Civil War – the classical building in the background was the old Custom House at 26 Wall Street, today`s Federal Hall. Twin carving staircases with decorative wrought-iron railings lead from the building`s entrance foyer up to the grand former banking hall, which now serves as an elegant backdrop for the Museum of American Finance.

The earliest known photograph of Wall Street was taken circa 1860 from the deck of a ship at the South Street docks on the East River. It shows the famous vista closed by Trinity Church at Broadway. In the pre-skycraper era Trinity Church towered above the Street`s commercial buildings – while today it is dwarfed by its neighbors.

Business Statistics

Business Statistics

Whether they are called quantitative methods, econometrics, psychological or business statistics, statistical methods are an indispensable tool in many scientific endeavors. Statistics are profusely used in business, while econometrics is a whole field that applies mathematical and statistical techniques to economic reality. Statisticians’ methodology is used extensively in financial analyses, marketing and even accounting.

A sample is a subset of a larger population that is supposed to accurately estimate some aspect of the population. A characteristic referring to the sample is called a statistic, while its population counterpart is a parameter (easy to remember since the words share the first letter in both cases). By convention, capital N refers to population while lower case n describes the sample. Random sampling, in which every item has an equal chance of being selected, is usually considered a prerequisite to unbiased reliable results.

Descriptive and Inferential Statistics

Data values can be quantitative or qualitative (categorical). Further, qualitative data can be subdivided into non-numeric and numeric, such as when each response, for example undergraduate business major, is assigned a number (finance – 1, marketing – 2, economics – 3, and so on). Both numeric and non-numeric can be nominal and ordinal. Quantitative data, in turn, can only be numeric but is subdivided into interval and ratio. Temperature would be interval, while age corresponds to ratio because someone who is 60 years old is exactly twice as old as a 30-year-old, but 10 degrees does not necessarily represent double the warmth of 5 degrees. The ratio versus interval is perhaps the most confusing of statistical concepts at an introductory course level.

Data

Many of the pictorial representations of statistics fall into the following common categories: pie chart, histogram, bar graph plus stem and leaf display. As mentioned above, the finance industry uses statistics to determine such items as price earnings ratios and dividend yields. Testing of theories such as arbitrage pricing also involves the fields of financial mathematics and financial econometrics. Excel is an excellent program to create charts. To create a stock chart in Excel one must know volume traded, opening and closing, as well as high and low, prices. Below are some examples of different displays using the software.

Graphs

The main visual difference between a histogram and a bar graph is that in a histogram columns touch, whereas in a bar graph they do not. Percentages are usually depicted in a pie chart, while for relative quantitative, relative categorical and cumulative frequencies, histograms, bar charts and ogives, respectively, are preferred.

Pie Chart

To draw a pie chart manually one must multiply the percentage of an element by 360 degrees. Thus, a 25% A would take 0.25  360= 90 degrees in the circle. Pie charts are often used in business for their clarity and impact. A marketing survey enquiring how many television sets households own may present their findings in this way (i.e. relative percentages of no TVs, 1 TV, 2 TVs, and 3 TVs).

Line Graphs

Of the examples provided here, the scatter plot is most similar to the line graph. The scatter plot contains dots corresponding to, usually, two variables (X and Y) and their interrelation is demonstrated by the regression, or best fit, line. If X and Y move in the same direction (as X increases, Y increases) they are said to be positively correlated, if their movements are reversed (as X increases, Y decreases or as X decreases, Y increases) then they are negatively correlated. Also, one never hears enough of this sentence: a correlation does not guarantee a causal effect.

In a corporate style presentation, a line graph would most likely be used to compare the fluctuation of the average price of gasoline and alternative energy sources (for instance Diesel, Regular, Premium and say Ethanol). None of the data in the pictures presented here is real; it is hypothetical, for illustrative purposes only. Conversely, a scatter plot may signify the relationship between average stay at a resort and food consumed (positive correlation) or price and quantity purchased (as price goes up, quantity goes down).

Stem & Leaf Display

In a stem (left) and leaf (right) display, first digits constitute the stem and the rest form the leaf. Unless otherwise specified a leaf unit equals one. So for instance the following set [90, 92, 92, 94, 97, 97, 97, 98, 99] would be portrayed as such:

9 | 0 2 2 4 7 7 7 8 9

Measures of Central Location

MEAN – perhaps the best-known statistical concept, the average. The mean is written as X bar (bar on top) for the sample, and the lower-case Greek alphabet letter Mu for the population. The mean is calculated by summing up all individual observations, and then dividing the sum by the total number of observations. Although decidedly useful, the mean can hide part of the picture. For instance, if one finds the average salary of marketing professionals, one outlier who was immensely more successful than everyone else may distort the number.

MEDIAN – to locate the median, one must first arrange the data in ascending order and find the middle position (number of data points + 1 / 2). If the sample is even, then it is necessary to take the average of the two middle values. In the case described above (advertizing specialists’ income distribution), the median would render a better picture of the true state of affairs.

MODE – from the French word meaning fashion, it is simply the value that appears most often in a collection (pun intended) of values. There can be more than one mode, and the sample can consequently be called unimodal (1 mode), bimodal (2 modes) and multimodal (3 or more). A mode would likely be the best measurement choice for a cosmetics’ retailer trying to determine which color of lipstick the store should stock up

Common Tax Errors to Avoid

Common Tax Errors to Avoid

Some things to remember before you sign the check

Include your Social Security number on each page of your tax return so that, if a page is misplaced by the IRS, it can be reattached.

Check that you have claimed all of your dependants, such as elderly parents who may not live with you.

Recheck your cost basis in the shares you sold this year, particularly shares of a mutual fund. Income and capital gains dividends that were automatically reinvested in the fund over the years increase your basis in the mutual fond and thus reduce a gain or increase a loss that you have to report.

Fill out Form 8606, Nondeductible IRA Contributions, for your contributions to an IRA account, even if you don’t claim any deduction for the contribution.

Be sure that your W-2s and 1099s are correct. If they’re wrong, have them corrected as soon as possible so IRS records agree with the amount shown on your return.

If you are married, check to see if filing separate returns rather than a joint return is more beneficial.

If you are single and have a dependant who lives with you, check to see if you qualify for the lower tax rates available to a head of household or surviving spouse with a dependant child.

Beekman street in New York. Photo by Elena

If you worked for more than one employer, be sure to claim the credit for any overpaid Social Security taxes withheld.

Check last year’s return to see if there are any items that carry over to this year, such as charitable contributions or capital losses that exceeded the amount you were previously able to deduct.

If you did not pay enough taxes during the year, complete form 2210, Underpayment of Estimated Tax, to calculate the underpayment penalty. You may come up with a lower penalty than the IRS would.

Don’t miss deadlines: December 31, to set up a Keogh plan; April 15, to make your IRA contribution, file your return, or request an extension.

If you regularly get large refunds, you’re having too much withheld and, in effect, giving an interest-free loan to the IRS. Changing the number of allowances you claim on a W-4 form will increase your take-home pay.

Sadness

Sadness

By Timons Esaias

My clothes illustrated the loss of culture. I had been raised a Congregationalist, in Little Falls, New York. I wore American suits and ties at work, and jeans and Pendleton shirts at home, until the New People decided that the ideal attire for human beings must be the robes and burnoose of Persia in the sixteenth century. My Amy Vanderbilt manners have been replaced with the extreme formalism of second century Shansy, with touches of fourteenth century Japan, and with completely invented New People additions thrown in. I have learned court poses, and formal mudras, and my native English has been replaced with the Sanskrit the New People decided was our best language. I am proficient in sign-speech; Not because I, or a relative, needed it, but because they don’t care to listen to our gabble; and so we must sign whenever more than three of us are together.

My religion had been replaced with the Wisdom, which seemed cobbled from Islam, Zoroastrianism, and Buddhism.

For years I had thought of myself as a highly cultured person, an artist and an intellectual. As each challenge, each adaptation had been presented by the planet’s nwe owners, I had risen to meet it, to exceed the standards required of us. I had been willing to commit murder, and commit it that very day, as part of my coping, my rising to meet a difficult and awkward transition. Standing on that Wall, that day, I lost my persona. Lost my reinvented, carefully maintened, safe, obliging self. I looked across the Fish with the eyes of a caged animal.

Sadness. Photo by Elena

I fought down the urge to push the visitor off the Wall, but only because I knew the attempt would be futile. Human reflexes are not fast enough to touch them, much less knock one over, and their boidies far too easily repair themselves.

Perhaps it sensed some part of my feelings, for it chose that moment to gesture in the direction of the cornfield and utter two full minutes of discordant four-theme lyrics. I was surprised to find myself following the gist of the speech, even though I found the meaning too bizarre and too awful for words. Still, I let the minder repeat the contents, while the visitor took a brief stroll down the battlements, awaiting my reply.

Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015, edited by Rich Horton, Prime Books, 2015.

Digital Art: Fantasy Worlds

Digital Art: Fantasy Worlds

Many 3D digital artists are taken with the design of virtual worlds. Naturally, these online, game and other worlds often take elements from fantasy and science-fiction scenery and backgrounds, while more rarely centering on the real world. While mostly seen in Web based, interactive, multi-player (multiple, simultaneous users) games, such artificial, sot to speak. Societies are likewise visible in other segments of society. For example, the Goth subculture or Medieval-character themed undertakings such as the Renaissance Fair are other examples. The Middle-Ages have very often been the main historical context in fantasy tales, just as the Victorian era is associated with Gothic art and literature and apparel.

A world full of fantasy. As can be seen from the picture. Image: Megan Jorgensen

Star Trek presents a series of worlds, including even additional dimensions and continuums (such as the one inhabited by the alien race in Voyager or the Q from The Next Generation). Middle Earth from The Lord of the Rings trilogy, as well as the surrounding of the Nibelung accounts and the legend surrounding not only knights of the round table, but also as it applies to magical actors, such as the Lady of the Lake, Morgan le Fay and Merlin. Another view of virtual life is in such Websites as SecondLife and its of use of avatars. Just as in Cameron’s movie, Avatar, avatars allow one to vicariously experience (as one’s own) an entity’s existence in an alternate world.

Fantasy Worlds. Photo by Elena