Update: Wall Street IS Main Street

Silver, Nadler, and State Senator-elect Daniel Squadron have finally released their estimates of how much it would cost to move the FDIC out of lower Manhattan: between one and four million dollars a year, on top of multi-million dollar moving costs.

These figures may well be accurate, and it's certainly hard to understand why the Fed would want to abandon its long-time home in Manhattan's Financial District. I'd love to hear some explanations for this proposed relocation.

In the meantime, it would be nice if our political leaders would stop using populist rhetoric to talk about the plight of financiers. Daniel Squadron has taken to repeating that "in lower Manhattan, Wall Street IS Main Street." This may be catchy, but it's hard to swallow the idea that the financial sector is just another embattled local industry.

Other Democratic leaders have been complaining that "the worsening economy continues to hammer this community." Calling bankers a community is pretty laughable; describing them as a group of victims being "hammered" by outside forces, like polar bears losing their homes to rising sea levels, is beyond laughable.