I'd go with something more like "secretive" than explicitly "secret". It's a weird & immensely powerful place in the UK, with some abstruse governing structures, hidden entirely in plain sight.

That's defensible.

Secretive? As in run by Committees that meet in public with agendas and minutes published on the City's website in accordance with the Local Government Act 1972.

Please. I've read Dan Brown's novels and I know that those are just phony and for confuse the proles. But just how the Priory of Sion is involved is still not clear to me.

Its existence may not be a secret but it's activities seem to be:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28827292

The article you link to is using the 'City of London' to refer to London's financial sector, which is primarily located in the City of London (rather like the use of 'Washington' to refer to the US government). It's not talking about anything shady that the institutions of the City of London itself are doing.

Relevance? I haven't said whether I'm talking about the City of London's government or its financial institutions (as if there's a difference). None of which has to do with "secrecy" which is arguably the relevant topic. On that subject, whether it's the government or the financial institutions or both, if they're engaged in money laundering, which is more likely: They keep those matters secret, or they don't keep those matters secret?

The article we're all commenting on is talking about the City of London in the sense of the geographic area administered by the City of London Corporation.

The article you linked to is talking about the shenanigans of the UK's financial sector (mostly concentrated in the City of London).

The UK financial sector is regulated by the FCA. Corporations headquartered in the City of London are subject to English law just like corporations headquartered in any other part of the country. So the role that the City of London Corporation plays in money laundering is relatively minor and indirect. Of course, there may well be corruption that is worth investigating and exposing.

Unfortunately, the idea of the City of London as some kind of extraterritorial legal island within the UK is catnip to conspiracy theorists of various stripes. It is complete nonsense. However, that is not to say that the City of London Corporation is not in need of reform.

The article title includes "the secret City of London." Without clarification, it's left to readers to decide what that means. It could mean its government actively maintains a cloak of secrecy, it could just mean that it's not well known, say, to Americans, or it could mean something in between. The latter pole--that it's not well known, say, to Americans--has been established in this thread. What I'm trying to do is offer evidence to support the former pole. If there's corruption within the City of London, that supplies a motive for its financial institutions or its government (as if there's a difference) to shield the activities that occur there from scrutiny.

The UK financial services sector is involved in money laundering. That does not have much to do with its location in the City of London. The City of London Corporation is essentially just a local authority and does not have the kind of governing powers that would enable it to play a major role in money laundering. For example, it does not regulate financial transactions or pass laws (except the largely inconsequential local ‘byelaws’ that any UK local authority can pass).

Yes quite correct. The Corporation is a local council, it collects the bins and operates one primary school.

There's always this misconception that it's some sort of lawless wild west. If it was, I assure you every company in the world would be based there!

> The Corporation is a local council, it collects the bins and operates one primary school.

Is that all it runs?

> There's always this misconception that it's some sort of lawless wild west.

I don't view it that way.

> I assure you every company in the world would be based there!

How many financial companies in the world are based there?

> How many financial companies in the world are based there?

Many, for sure. Plenty more are headquartered in Canary Wharf, which is not in the City but in Tower Hamlets. These include Barclays, HSBC and Citigroup.

That's one way to put it. Another way to put it is "most". The City has the largest number of financial firms, the largest share of office space, and the largest share of trading volume and assets under management. It's home to the Bank of England and the London Stock Exchange, and will be home to HSBC when it finishes its move there from Canary Wharf.

Those firms have been accused--indirectly--of money laundering. If they're engaged in that vice, it's plausible to me they would add the additional vice of protecting it from scrutiny. I.e. engaging in "secrecy." It need not collude with the government to do so, but if it did it would hardly be the first time business and government colluded under a veil of secrecy.

As for what the actual City of London Corporation runs, since you didn't answer the question, I'll answer it for you. In addition to collecting bins and operating one school, it also runs a police department.

The firms you mention have certainly colluded with the government in Westminster, which is the one that regulates financial services. The City of London Corporation is merely a local authority (albeit a quirky one), and banks don't really need its cooperation in order to launder money. (HSBC did a fine job of it from Canary Wharf, for example.)

>it also runs a police department.

As do many other regions of the country. There's nothing surprising or sinister about this. There isn't any connection between this administrative fact and money laundering.

I'm not saying there's anything necessarily sinister or surprising about its police department. I'm just trying to be more complete. If we say the City just collects bins and runs one school, well that's not really giving the full picture, now is it?

Beyond that, consider this:

-The City has one of highest concentrations of global finance power in the world, if not the highest.

-That global finance power--global banking and commerce--has been accused of illicit activity, largely money laundering.

-If they do engage in that illicit activity, they probably collude with whatever governments they need to to advance their interests. It only makes sense.

-And, they probably would cloak these activities under a veil of secrecy. That also only makes sense.

Little if any of this is in dispute. What seems to be in dispute is the answer to these related questions:

Money laundering can happen anywhere, in Canary Wharf, in the Channel Islands, hell in New York and Delaware. But, is there something unique about the square mile? If so, what is it? Whatever conditions create a money laundering opportunity, are those conditions enhanced by what's unique about the City? And if it's not the Corporation, then what is it? If there's a high degree of money laundering there to go along with its high concentration of global finance power, then why is that? Because there hasn't been equivalent such accusations against New York and Delaware. The square mile has been called out as playing an outsized role in corruption. If that's true--supposing for the sake of argument it is--if that's true, then why? Is it just coincidence? Global finance and the vices it's indulged in had to land somewhere, and the City was as good a place as any?

Where is the UK financial services sector concentrated?

> The article title includes "the secret City of London." Without clarification, it's left to readers to decide what that means.

Generally speaking the etiquette on HN is to at least pretend that you've read the article. I've rarely seen someone so audaciously using the fact that they didn't read the article as a defense.

Whether or not there's an etiquette for HN, there's definitely guidelines for HN which among other things encourage commenters not to accuse each other of not reading the articles, and to give each other the benefit of the doubt.

As it happens, I did read the article before writing my first comment. That would be the article which uses the word "secret" in its title but neither "secret" nor "secrecy" anywhere else in the body. Put another way, having actually read the article, among the many interesting things it says, one thing I know it doesn't say is exactly what it means by its title

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I’ve read this exact factoid at least a few hundred times. I’m mostly just amazed that it continues to surprise people.

Obligatory xkcd: 10,000.

I'm glad people are learning a neat new factoid but it really wasn't a secret.

Equally obligatory: link to the xkcd[0][1]

[0]https://xkcd.com/1053/ [1]https://m.xkcd.com/1053/

Yup. I stopped reading when I got to the bit where they explained that the "secret city" was the City of London. That's tabloid crap.

But it’s such an unexpected power structure in a modern democracy some people don’t really believe it even when told.

They are right to disbelieve.

Aside from the points others have made that the congestion charge introduced by the mayor of the large urban area of London which covers the whole of central London[1] doesn't really have anything to do with the City of London boundaries or administration, I don't think "it's not well known in America" justifies the use of "secret"

The jurisdictions of San Mateo and Santa Clara aren't particularly well known in the UK but I'd still think any journalist referring to them as "secret" was being ludicrously hyperbolic...

[1]an area with approximately 17x the population of the City of London, and I suspect the ULEZ emissions charge which now covers all 9 million London residents also gets dragged into the US debate...

I never said anything about it being a "secret", nor did I even use the word.

You seem to be having an argument with the title of the piece, not with me.

The London congestion charge is a much larger area than the City

https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/congestion-charge/congestio...

It's a fraction by area, but it's by far the densest and busiest part of the city. Comparisons to half of Manhattan are not unwarranted.

Only if you don't know anything about Manhattan other than "density".

The now-canceled project would have affected, at a minimum, about 10% of New York's entire resident population (~800k). A lot of New Yorkers actually live in Manhattan south of 60th. That's part of why it's dense.

A more reasonable comparison to the current London congestion area would be midtown -- the small area in the middle of Manhattan with the obvious skyscrapers, as well as Times Square, theaters, throngs of tourists, and the bulk of finance.

It's not canceled. They paused the plan.

It’s about 8 square miles - in Manhattan that would be about the area below 42nd street

You can't compare land areas directly. London is twice the size of New York. Population density, land uses, etc. are completely different.

For example, only about 140k people [1] live in the London area. Easily 800k live in the Manhattan area, and probably more (population density is higher on the lower half of the island, due to things like Central Park).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_congestion_charge#Prese...

So higher density means fewer cars per person and more reason to have a congestion charge

You're quibbling. The portion covered by the congestion charges is a tiny, tiny portion of the whole of London, comprising mostly business and entertainment areas.

The point I am making is that Americans use the naming confusion to draw the fundamentally misleading comparison.

The congestion charge in London has absolutely nothing to do with the City.

Yes the City of London has a population of around 10,000 but employs nearly 1 million by some estimates since the legal and financial capitals exist within it.

So, it's midtown Manhattan, which is a small portion of the area NYC proposed to meter.

What are you talking about the London congestion charge is analogous to the NYC one, covering the core central business district.

Residents would largely not have to pay, if they follow the London model. The London congestion zone covers ~150K residents, but above 1 million commuters, not counting trade and tourists.

Sensible, but unfortunately, that's not how it was going to work in NYC. Any car entering the zone below 60th would be covered, regardless of residency. Taxis, ride shares, deliveries, etc., were all covered as well.

The area in NYC was little more than a new tax on residents, disguised as congestion pricing. I'd personally have little problem with a fee that made carve-outs for the people who actually live here (and I say that as someone who doesn't own a car).

Thanks for the numbers on residents in the London area.

You’re just wrong. I live in NYC right next to the congestion zone and it would affect me greatly. I also have lived temporarily in London with a car. They’re very much similar plans.

You clearly don’t like the NYC one which is fine, but that wasn’t the topic.

As for the NYC one it’s a fee for using a car, not a tax on residents. Those are two different things.

Also you’re factually wrong, as the east/west side highways were exempted. So you very much could transit the area, or from the Brooklyn Bridge to upstate or the Battery Tunnel to Washington Heights, for example.

I live in the congestion zone. It would affect me greatly, even though I don't own a car. That's my point. Nothing you've written addresses that point.

> As for the NYC one it’s a fee for using a car, not a tax on residents. Those are two different things.

Any fee on car traffic in the zone that does not exclude residents, is de facto, a tax on residents. Even if you never ever ever take a taxi or ride in a car, the billion dollars in projected annual revenues don't just magically disappear because they're being paid by the people who deliver the goods you need for daily existence, the businesses where you shop, or the services you utilize. They get passed down to you, in the form of higher prices.

This is basic economics.

> Also you’re factually wrong, as the east/west side highways were exempted. So you very much could transit the area, or from the Brooklyn Bridge to upstate or the Battery Tunnel to Washington Heights, for example.

You're arguing about something I didn't say and isn't relevant to my arugment, so I'm not sure how I'm "factually wrong".

Yes, the west side highway and the FDR were exempted. Regardless, if your destination was inside the congestion zone, or you ended up driving there to get somewhere else, you were going to be charged the fee. But I don't care if you can travel upstate from Brooklyn. I live in Manhattan, not upstate. My argument is about people living here.

Not incidentally, when you say "or from the Brooklyn Bridge to upstate" that's some incredibly slippery wording, because, in fact, that's the only direction you can go from the Brooklyn bridge without incurring a fee. Per the MTA [1]:

> Vehicles can travel from the FDR Drive to the Brooklyn Bridge, and from the Brooklyn Bridge to the FDR Drive northbound without hitting the street grid and so will not be tolled. Vehicles traveling from the Brooklyn Bridge to the FDR southbound, however, will be tolled, as that connection includes hitting the grid at Pearl Street.

[1] https://congestionreliefzone.mta.info/faqs

They may be confusing it with London's ULEZ (ultra low emissions zone), which was expanded last year with no democratic mandate and has been hugely controversial.

No, not even close. The NYC one covered all of Manhattan south of 60th, and almost every ingress/egress to the island. As I said in my comment, even if you only consider people who live in Manhattan (which is a fraction of the NYC residents affected by the proposed policy), it would have covered about 10% of the entire city -- about 800,000 people.

Only in the most broad definition of central business district.

The NYC one was just a toll, which would have created a variety of problems without really solving a bunch of others beyond revenue generation. The people gridlocking the west side to get on the tunnels aren't going to blink at a surcharge for the most part. The alternative in most cases is a $100 Uber, so a $25 toll is an annoying bargain. But massive industries, like specialty healthcare, would have been boned by patients who cannot handle the fare.

In the healthcare example, advocates would be like "not a problem! just get an exemption permit!". When my wife was being treated at MSK for an aggressive cancer, it took almost 5 months to get a NYC handicapped permit -- she unfortunately didn't live long enough to benefit. The street closures during COVID were often cited as a quality of life improvement... closures don't require a toll.

I'm gonna add that it is not super super well explained why did it stay that way either which was the curious part for me.

Well, it's not now!

p.s. the first rule of London is we don't talk about London...

The secret isn't that the city of london has existed for centuries. Articles like this are designed to elicit your response. The secret is to what extent the social-political order in the West determined by the Finance and the extent to which they exercise power over nominally sovereign entities.

You get a pass; the title was being overly gratuitous.