According to Bloomberg's analysis of government data for the 100 largest metropolitan areas, Seattle's Gross Metropolitan Product (GMP) is only behind that of San Jose (number one), San Francisco (number two), and some Connecticut suburb beloved by Wall Street bankers (number three).

But bankers do not really make anything, and most of their money does not go into or is made from investments in the real economy but instead socially useless things like stock buybacks ("[there have been] more than $1.5 trillion in buybacks over the past three years, topping the annual gross domestic product of South Korea") and other forms of asset inflation (such as property values—the astonishing $50 million that was added in just two years to the value of the Dexter Horton Building is an excellent example of the kind of inflation that Wall Street is about).

The general uselessness of the banking and financial sector to ordinary citizens is made all the more apparent by the fact that the public's basic banking needs could easily and more cheaply be handled by the post office, as Bernie Sanders argues. And why not the post office? The government already backs deposits of up to $250,000. For this and other social, economic, and financial reasons, we can completely ignore that bankers suburb in Connecticut and simply count San Jose, San Francisco, and Seattle as the leading "productivity hubs" of the United States.