Lee Kuan Yew's simple minded explanation for why london is
financial centre:
As for Shanghai's goal of matching international financial
cities like New York or London, Mr Lee said the Chinese financial
hub will need to adapt some more, such as enhancing the use of
English.
"In order for Shanghai to be an international financial centre,
the city needs a big pool of talented people who can speak English.
This is not only for the financial centre, it's also for lawyers,
accountants and (other) professionals."
http://news.asiaone.com/News/the+Straits+Times/Story/A1Story20100503-213726.html
Just master english according to the anglophile Lee Kuan Yew. He
just can't stop licking britian's ass.
Bill Clinton 's professor explanation for why london is
financial centre:
This third stage of capitalism is of such overwhelming significance
in the history of the twentieth century, and its ramifications and
influences have been so subterranean and even occult, that we may
be excused if we devote considerate attention to its organization
and methods. Essentially what it did was to take the old
disorganized and localized methods of handling money and credit and
organize them into an integrated system, on an international basis,
which worked with incredible and well-oiled facility for many
decades. The center of that system was in London, with major
offshoots in New York and Paris, and it has left, as its greatest
achievement, an integrated banking system and a heavily
capitalized—if now largely obsolescent—framework of heavy industry,
reflected in railroads, steel mills, coal mines, and electrical
utilities.
This
system had its center in London for four chief
reasons.
First was the great volume of savings in England, resting on
England's early successes in commercial and industrial
capitalism.
Second was England's oligarchic social structure (especially as
reflected in its concentrated landownership and limited access to
educational opportunities) which provided a very inequitable
distribution of incomes with large surpluses coming to the control
of a small, energetic upper class.
Third was the fact that this upper class was aristocratic but
not noble, and thus, based on traditions rather than birth, was
quite willing to recruit both money and ability from lower levels
of society and even from outside the country, welcoming American
heiresses and central-European Jews to its ranks, almost as
willingly as it welcomed monied, able, and conformist recruits from
the lower classes of Englishmen, whose disabilities from
educational deprivation, provincialism, and Nonconformist (that is
non-Anglican) religious background generally excluded them from the
privileged aristocracy.
Fourth (and by no means last) in significance was the skill in
financial manipulation, especially on the international scene,
which the small group of merchant bankers of London had acquired in
the period of commercial and industrial capitalism and which lay
ready for use when the need for financial capitalist innovation
became urgent.
http://real-world-news.org/bk-quigley/02.html#4