Wall Street-backed"?! The horror! They actually are open to investment garnered through public markets! Any Joe Schmo can simply invest his money in Simon or Nieman Marcus whenever he wants! Disgusting!
Ned Part II, if you're such a crusader for public accountability (which you seem to be less than you seem to be someone so worried about his view that he's willing to destroy hundreds of millions of dollars of investment in a new building and all of the jobs and rent-lowering additional housing supply that it would entail, not to mention the benefits that would accrue to the city's skyline and streetlife), wouldn't you feel that a company traded on "Wall Street" (i.e., a public market), with the accounting standards and openness to any individual's money that that entails would be preferable to having a privately owned company that can be less open about its finances and plans?
Response: Institutions (like Harvard University, pension funds, Wall Street investment banks and even foreign government-affiliated investment companies) own large chunks of stock Simon and Neiman Marcus's parent company. But most people who live in Boston who are part of the 99 percent don't have the option of attempting to enrich themselves by playing the stock market, since they either earn too little in wages or salaries, did not inherit any money from rich parents or have to spend most of their family income on shelter, food needs, etc. Realistically, only "Joe Schmos" who happen to be relatively rich can "simply invest his money in Simon and Neiman Marcus whenever he wants."
The jobs of construction workers in the USA have actually been destroyed more by the speculation and lay-off decisions/plant closing decisions and de-investment decisions of the Wall Street-backed firm corporate executives than by the proponents of a massive government-funded affordable housing construction program by public/non-profit developers in the 21st-century (which would quickly reduce the unemployment rate of 35 percent for example of Local 103 IBEW members, etc.). Most independent studies show that building unaffordable, luxury apartments in a neighborhood generally drives up rents and property taxes in neighborhoods like the Back Bay and South End, while building more affordable apartment units for low-income and moderate-income tenants in a given neighborhood while providing tax relief advantages for small homeowners reduces rents significantly (and, especially, if local rent regulation ordinances are also enacted).
As the Enron scandal and the sub-prime mortgage scandals on Wall Street indicated, accounting firms on Wall Street have been reluctant to blow the whistle on their Wall Street firm clients in the absence of tighter SEC regulations, even if the corporation is not just privately-owned but also sells stock to a small section of the "public." Non-profit real estate development and construction firms that are municipally-owned by all of the public (and not just by the minority of"the public" who are investors/speculators/developers) would be a more preferable way to both immediately rebuild the USA and more rapidly provide jobs for unemployed construction workers and unemployed architects in 2012.
