Here’s a “Wall Street” investment opportunity for you, brought to our attention by the Danish business newspaper Børsen:

Wall Street putter 10 dollar i Christiania http://t.co/mHIuhLHb

November 5, 2011 12:10 pm via twitterfeedReplyRetweetFavorite

@borsendk

borsen.dk

“Christiania”? That’s the renegade area of Copenhagen which since its initial squat in 1971, on what had been an abandoned area of the city’s defenses, has styled itself the “Freetown” of Christiania, subject (by and large) to its own laws and maintenance of public order rather than those of the Danish state. (We’ve had occasion to cover this subject here before.)

The problem is, Christiania needs money. The area is still government land, strictly-speaking, and the new strategy of the Danish government for cracking down on it is to have the residents buy it, for 76 million Danish crowns (a little over €10.2 million), if they want to stay there. They’ve got until 1 April 2012 to come up with the first installment of DKK 46 million (a little over €6 million); so far they have been able to gather together a little over DKK 4 million into their Freestate Christiania Fund.

In the spirit of Willie Sutton, then (“because that’s where the money is!”), the fund has dispatched a representative to Wall Street, an “economics advisor” named Risenga Manghezi, to push Christiania folkeaktien (“people’s shares”) there. But the piece’s headline (and the tweet) reveals what “success” Manghezi has had so far: she has raised $10.

That probably should come as little surprise. For what are these “people’s shares” exactly? An earlier piece in Børsen on Christiania’s buy-out plan (actually, a “leader” or opinion article whose title is “Good for you, Christiania”) fills in details on what writer Christopher Arzrouni calls “a nice initiative, but also a paradox”:

You decide yourself how much you want to pay, and people will not worry about how much the people’s shares rise or fall in value. It is in fact not a proper share. People receive a symbolic co-ownership and support something that is not commercial.

Maybe that meager success – so far – in gaining money from Wall Street is not such a surprise after all. Still, in the original article referenced by the tweet Manghezi declares him(her?)self delighted at the “fantastic” way things have been going: “This has been a big challenge to get through to these men in suits, but the most important thing is that the shares have been in Wall Street’s hands. This is really important symbolically.” Manghezi next plans to cross the tracks to visit the Occupy Wall Street protestors to see if she might get some interest in her folkeaktien for Christiania there.

A new drugstore recently opened up in New York City, and the Financial Times Deutschland’s correspondent there, Thorsten Schröder, was there to cover it. Sound strange? Well, this is no ordinary drugstore – this is truly a Wall Street drugstore in the “Too Big to Fail” tradition. Titling his piece (in English) Bankster’s Paradise – Schröder has evidently been in the States long enough to be down with his Coolio references – he leads:

The lunch-break is saved: A pretentious drugstore opens on Wall Street, where they know what brokers need and love – sushi, money and stock-quotes.

Opening day there featured the autograph-signing presence of no less than Darryl Strawberry (trust me: a gigantic NYC baseball celebrity), but it’s the unique amenities that are sure to keep the Financial District worker-bees devoting their lunch-hours here.

In fact, the traders and bankers can find in this Wall Street drugstore almost everything they need in their lives. He who has spent the morning pulling his hair out over falling prices can get it repaired at noon under chandeliers at the hairdresser’s there. Or he can sit on a wooden throne to get his leather shoes shined. There’s an internal manicure-salon, a skin-analysis center and an apothecary’s.

That’s not to mention the sushi bar, with NYSE stock-quotes displayed on an electronic ticker-screen behind it, nor the vaulted ceilings, marble floors, and even golden escalators (yes: güldene Rolltreppen) that mark the place’s layout.

Appropriately enough, this latest affiliate of the Duane Reade drugstore chain is housed in the Trump building and occupies the space formerly taken up by a branch of the Bank of Manhattan. The firm’s management is explicitly experimenting with this new wrinkle of a retail concept as a way to try to make up for the losses it suffered from its prior “Superstore” – not that that was a mistaken business approach, that store just happened to be located in one of the World Trade Center buildings in September, 2011.