The Many Capitals of The USA

It’s interesting to consider some of the main services or products produced by a city. Sometimes you might even consider a place the capital of whatever it’s known for. Feel free to comment any suggestions that you feel I left out, if you want, or share this article if you find it interesting. Thank you. Now, in mostly alphabetical order…

Chicago

can be considered the capital of Mercantile, since it’s home to the Futures market, where all kinds of commodities are sold. New York has a futures market also, but the CME actually owns it. A lot of trains pass through Chicago, and goods are dispersed from there so it seems appropriate to call it the capital of commodities.

Similarly, the CBOE (Chicago Board Options Exchange) is there, which is kind of like the futures market for stocks. It’s basically stock insurance and sounds very complicated at first, if you’re not familiar.

Detroit

is considered the automotive capital since it has the car industry in large part there.

Hartford

is often called the capital of insurance, since so many companies are headquartered there.

Funny side note: A friend of mine used to be a security guard at one, and he was convinced the building was haunted. He said the elevator would come down to the bottom when he was the only person in the building sometimes. If I remember correctly, it was the Mass Mutual building. I don’t know whether someone was pulling his leg or it’s just an elevator thing.

Las Vegas

is often seen as the capital of gambling for the US.

Los Angeles

is the capital of the film industry with Hollywood, the studios, and all.

Memphis or Nashville?

might be considered the capital of music, or country at least. I imagine people argue, but… I’ll just leave this one for Tennessee to decide.

Orlando

could be considered the capital of theme parks, perhaps. Maybe some would disagree, but you can’t pretend Disney, Universal Studios, SeaWorld, etc. aren’t there. It wouldn’t surprise me if I left out some.

San Francisco

is definitely the capital of the tech industry. Most of the big companies move here even if they didn’t start in San Francisco. Since crypto currency is becoming popular and Coinbase is located there, it might also be considered the capital of crypto, since it’s basically the crypto exchange.

Dr. Thomas Sowell said that if you own a house in San Francisco and sold it, you’d automatically count in the top one percent of wealth for America that year. That’s how expensive real estate is there.

Both SF and NYC have the highest rent prices in America for the same reasons. It’s partly in demand and also they’re very restrictive on development.

New York

of course is the capital of finance for the US with the NASDAQ and NYSE there, investment banks etc.

I guess it’s considered the capital of mass media, or publishing, for America too. They also have the big news, and newspapers. There’s also quite a few publishing companies for books and magazines.

Charlotte

might be considered the capital of commercial banking. Bank of America, Truist Corp, and Wels Fargo have headquarters there. Lending Tree is also located there, and is comparatively smaller, as a company, but any company publicly valued at over a billion dollars is still huge.

Well, there’s just a brief thought experiment about capitals of the US, from a different perspective. I hope it was helpful, interesting, or entertaining. Feel free to follow me if you like articles on the various random topics I’m easily amused by. Lol