Mayor Rudy Giuliani will join Fortune magazine officials toannounce New York is ranked "the number one best city forbusiness." It will happen this afternoon at 2 p.m. in the NasdaqVisitors Center in the Lobby Level Broadcast Studio at 4 TimesSquare on the corner of 43rd Street and Broadway. According to somewho spoke informally with GlobeSt.com, this can only help the valueof property here. Then it couldn't come at a better time as WallStreet marches toward an economic downturn.

Last week was a bad one on Wall Street, with traders panickingover debates raging between the Bush camp and voters in Palm SpringCounty, FL seeking the ability from the courts to recast theirvotes in the presidential election. Nasdaq was down Friday by171.36, its lowest since Nov. 3, 1999. Overall for the week it fell422.59. The Dow Jones fell 231.30 and Standard & Poor's fell34.16 on Friday. For the week the Dow fell 215 and the S&P fell60.71.

Williams Real Estate is one of several companies whose reportson market activity have received ink recently. This report statesthe Midtown South vacancy rate has increased by approximately 0.4%to 4.4%. It does show Manhattan's overall vacancy rate has droppedfrom 5.1% to 4.8%, but significantly less than half of free spacehas been absorbed as compared with the beginning of the year.