How come NYC became a financial capital of the world if it had such a bad rep of having a very high crime rate?

At one time London was the financial capital of the world and it had a very high crime rate.

People in serious positions such as the financial industry are aware NYC is not even in the top ten cities for per capita crime.  When you have 8.2 million people in a city, it will have more crimes than a town of 50,000.  And leaving out Bernie Madoff, NYC crime has little to do with the financial district.

I seem to recall from the novel Time and Again that the police in 1880 maintained a "deadline" at the northern edge of the financial district at about Fulton Street that less than respectable looking people were not allowed to cross.

NYC did not have a reputation of having a high crime rate as it was developing into the financial capital of the world. That happened in the 1990s, by which time most things were on computers anyway. They have cleaned things up, and Manhattan, at least, is now one of the safest cities in the country. 

The industry is not based on CASH - it is based upon the fluctuation of the perceived value of goods and services.  We check our investments in out brokerage app a few times a day, and neither rejoice it despair when we see fluctuation - it is NOT MONEY at that point, but just numbers in computers.  It would take incredible expertise for a theif to hack into a brokerage and clean out accounts. This is not anything that EXISTS until you personally convert those numbers to another investment, or cash (highly unlikely!). No punk is going to stick a gun in your ribs in a parking lot, and demand that transfer a Morgan Stanley quarterly dividend to what ?  Your piggy bank???  You have been watching to many TV shows - written by people who have NO CLUE about finance - which is not "real money" in your wallet.  

As with most cities, there are good and bad areas.  Obviously, the financial district is in the good part.  There are still criminals, but they use computers and not guns.