Entrepot on Thames
The City is an oddity: one of the world's three dominant financial centres, and the one without a home market to match. New York and Tokyo serve the two biggest economies of all, and could keep them- selves warm if they never earned a cent or yen abroad, but the world's fourth or fifth biggest economy could not, by itself, gener- ate enough business to support a centre on anything like the same scale. The City must live by exporting, as it has and does. The Victorian City was better at financing for- eign railways than financing British indus- try, and every so often today's City finds itself on the same charge. Its young sparks know more about Hong Kong than Hull, and would be more at home there. Indeed, the City itself looks and feels more and more like a Western Hong Kong, with its own international population at work and play. It is a huge financial entrepot, off the shore of the Thames.
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