America on the road to perdition

James Doran

James Doran drives from Wall Street to Detroit to discover how the American Dream turned into a nightmare

As we pull over by a ‘roach-coach’ lunch-cart on the corner of Wall Street and Water Street on an unseasonably warm October day, it is no surprise that the tumbling stock market is on everybody’s mind. More than half of American households own shares and one in three individuals rely on the market to provide for their retirement. ‘The Street’, as this narrow thoroughfare is known to locals, is bustling – but not with bankers and traders as one might expect. Rather, Wall Street is jammed with television crews and tourists. The crumbling economy has become an attraction to gawp at like a sideshow.

‘We wanted to see what was happening down here,’ says Gary Burtzel, a tourist from Indiana. ‘We’re kind of surprised to see all the TV people.’

He is also surprised at the lack of ‘Wall Street’ on Wall Street. There is a Tiffany jeweller’s shop where a famous trading house once stood. The former New York Merchants Exchange and the headquarters of National City Bank is now home to an expensive Cipriani restaurant.

But one tiny bolthole has survived booms and busts for more than 30 years: Minas Polycaronakis has been shining, repairing and making shoes for the world’s wealthiest feet since 1976 and he admits he has never seen it so bad. ‘It is really, really bad,’ he says. ‘People are scared that they will lose their jobs. And not only in New York and on Wall Street. This time it is the whole country. People got too greedy and it went out of control. Now we have to clean up the mess.’ But he does not believe an end is in sight any time soon.