I have been donating platelets several times a year at a church drive in Basking Ridge NJ for several years now and know implicitly the attendance level of donors at this church as well as helping run the blood drive at our church in the next town over.
They are on one of the main commuter train lines out of lower Manhattan and Jersey City where Wall Street moved to after 9/11. 11 parishioners lost their lives on 9/11 from this parish out of 1500 families.
Today the crowd was extremely heavy for a summer Sunday. I mean there was 6 people lined up for the 6 available aphoresis machines at 12:15 PM and about 5 for whole blood donations. Usually there is 2-3 total donors at this time. I don't attend this church but I don't think they were making any special preparations to attract a larger attendance since they didn't even have coffee, donuts or fruit for the donors. Nor do I think they got a bunch of runners preparing for NYC marathon in Oct.
Since the only other time I saw this type of upswing in donor pickup at our church was after 9/11 and the start of the Iraq war. I don't think any one in Basking Ridge is going to lose their house for any increase in the teaser interest rates on their mortgage but for the fact that they may lose their well paying job in financial services with the brokerage firms in lower Manhattan or Jersey City.
I think that worrying about the losing of your job could make you want to the right things in life if you think the job cut axe may not fall on your head if you do a good deed.
News 
Market Data 
Discover 
AI
