Alvin Hall's Wall Street stories

• Alvin Hall's Wall Street Walk
• Thursday 23 October at 1100 BST
• BBC Radio 4 and iPlayer

As the financial crisis sends shockwaves around the world, Alvin Hall visits its epicentre - Wall Street - to discover the human stories behind the credit crunch.

To the outsider, it might seem Wall Street is entirely made up of huge banks and high-powered financial houses.

But the reality is that behind that facade there are thousands of small businesses and ordinary office workers on ordinary salaries.

On other streets all around New York, there are thousands more people whose jobs depend on the wealth generated on Wall Street.

And there are charities and community organisations who rely on the big banks and their generous donations.

Alvin Hall hears some of these untold stories.

"SOPHIE", LEHMAN BROTHERS EMPLOYEE

Sophie - not her real name - has watched Lehman Brothers collapse from the inside and has seen this take its toll on her friends and colleagues. Like many others, she is waiting to find out whether Barclays Capital - which bought part of Lehman Brothers - will give her long-term employment.

" It happened throughout the course of a few months.

I believe it was in July when we first hit $12. It was a Friday afternoon and the stock price had been declining all week.

Everyone on the trading floor was tired of seeing the red flashing numbers of the declining stock price.

Someone put up a piece of paper to cover up the numbers, because it seemed so outlandish that Lehman's stock price could be declining that much.

Different people handled it different ways. A lot of the senior management - who had a real equity stake in the company and who saw their careers grow and develop there - were much more emotional than other people.

Lehman Brothers was like their family.

I think we are all still in a bit of a state of shock about it.

Something went really wrong this year. I think it will be wrong for many years. "

GEORGE ROSSI, FORMER LEHMAN BROTHERS EMPLOYEE

George Rossi describes the day he was made redundant from his job as a trainer at Lehman Brothers, and where the bank's collapse leaves his personal finances.

" I could not believe that Lehman Brothers could fail and and that the government or the Wall Street community would let a firm like Lehman Brothers fail.

I was absolutely stunned.

A 150-year-old firm gone.

Gradually the truth of this started to sink in, and then the devastation of what it could mean to me really sank in.

It was almost like the perfect storm of the worst things that could happen to a person: I lost my job ; I lost my severance package; I lost all the value of my Lehman Brothers shares; and as a tax payer in this country I get to foot the bill for everyone else in Wall Street who gets saved.

This is what a lot of people don't talk about - people like me.

The media does not talk about us, the government certainly does not talk about us.

They talk about the shareholders, about the taxpayers, the greedy Wall Street fat cats, [but] most of Lehman Brothers were people just like me. "

GEOFFERY CANADA, HEAD OF THE HARLEM CHILDREN'S ZONE

Geoffery Canada runs the Harlem Children's Zone, a not-for-profit organisation, which provides education, health, social and recreational services for children in Harlem. He says it relies heavily on the charity of Wall Street banks.

" It was my belief that very wealthy individuals, who grew up in circumstances very unlike those of the poor children in Haarlem, would care less about how these children were doing.

I found that to be the exact opposite.

Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs - you name them, and they have been involved as major supporters.

You saw Lehman gone, Morgan Stanley changing, Goldman changing - all these organisations are becoming different kinds of organisations.

I'm not sure we will find a place that can generate the kind of support they provided for us.

You hear this all the time in New York City: for every Wall Street job, there are two others lost.

Well, two of those jobs are right here in Harlem.

The guy who's working down here in the back office, and the person who is working in the restaurants - these people are going get laid off and the poorest communities are going to be the hardest hit.

And then they are the last places to recover. So Harlem is going to be disproportionately impacted by this downturn.

This would be the worst time for us to start thinking about cutting services to poor children. "

DR EMILY STEIN, PSYCHOLOGIST

Dr Emily Stein is a psychologist working in Midtown on 6th Avenue. Since the crisis started she has been dealing with her clients' fears about the crisis. Some are Wall Street workers who worked for the collapsed banks, others are just watching as their fortunes diminish in the stock market.

" There are people who feel horrified by the collapse of these major institutions that have been around in their lifetime.

'How could Lehman fall. How could Bear Stearns? What is happening?'

There is an eerie calm that we are all in this together, that it is happening to everyone, that we will somehow muddle through.

I think people are angry at themselves.

People are upset that they were greedy and they got swept away with the illusion of the wealth they were having. "

The Crash: Alvin Hall's Wall Street Walk will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Thursday 23 October at 1100 BST.

Find out about the BBC Radio 4 Crashseries.