Marketplace starts Wall Street blog, er, section

Heidi Moore of “Marketplace” on American Public Media has started writing a Wall Street blog for its website, but she doesn’t want it called a blog.

Moore writes, “We’ll write columns and post explainers, links and articles about Wall Street to help you understand how the Street works, in plain English and with the same lively and conversational coverage you’ve come to expect from us.

“I’ll be writing most of the section, so let me introduce myself. I’ve been covering Wall Street since 1999 — the height of the tech boom, when it was at its giddiest — first for publications including The Deal and Financial News, designed specifically for the bankers and lawyers and traders to learn about each other. By the time the financial crisis rolled around in 2008, I was writing for The Wall Street Journal (both online and print every day) and almost everything that I knew — and that everyone else knew — about Wall Street was rendered completely useless. That was still true after I went on to contribute to the New York Times’ DealBook, the Washington Post, Slate, Fortune.com and the Financial Times. It was like falling through the looking glass – and in fact, it reminded me of the great line from ‘Alice in Wonderland’ : ‘Why sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!’

“Wall Street is not breaking the rules of time and space any more, and we don’t have banks failing at warp speed.

“But in many ways, we are in an even more interesting time. We are creating new rules in Washington. Most investment banks, hedge funds, and stock exchanges are looking for new ways to make money, because the old ways aren’t working the way they used to. The federal government, Federal Reserve and Treasury are setting rules every week that impact the flow of money and America’s position in global competitiveness. The nature of Wall Street itself is changing. Even the experts — and there are many — are hanging on by their fingernails to what they knew before.”

Read more here.