I'll start with the obvious question: What the f*ck?
Second question: What the hell has Bloomberg done to make us think he's the right guy to handle this crisis and the profound effect it is already having on the NYC economy? The argument is that "this is the crisis he's been preparing his whole life for," but the reality is that this is the crisis he helped build.
Let's hop in the way-back machine and travel to 2003, to a point at which then first-term Mike was up against it for the high cost of living and taxes in the face of a decline in the number and spending power of the city's middle class. His answer to his many critics:
Essentially, "suck it up and move to the suburbs." And politically, at least, it worked. The financial sector boomed during the middle part of this decade based largely upon the mortgage industry (more on that in a minute) and produced salad days somewhat akin to the dot-com boom of the mid-90s. Meanwhile, manufacturing jobs in the city have droppped by nearly 30% since 1995.''If New York City is a business, it isn't Wal-Mart -- it isn't trying to be the lowest-priced product in the market,'' a draft of the speech reads. ''It's a high-end product, maybe even a luxury product. New York offers tremendous value, but only for those companies able to capitalize on it.''
Mr. Bloomberg's address signaled, in perhaps the starkest terms yet, his change from a man who thought higher taxes would ''destroy this city'' to one who sees the city he governs as a value-added commodity.
''New York City is never going to be the lowest-priced place to do business; it is just the most efficient place to do business,'' Mr. Bloomberg told reporters later. ''You have to get value for the moneys that you're going to spend.''
No one noticed, though, because Bloomberg's gambit of creating higher paying jobs then taxing the bejesus out of them to create his "luxury product" seemed to have worked. You'll have to trust me on these numbers - I can't find the article they're from anywhere, but anyway - 10% of NYC's new jobs added during the Bloomberg administration have been in the financial sector. However, more than 30% of the new income came from those jobs.
Yes, that's insanely out of whack. Building the economy based on speculation and a construction boom begat by shady mortgages is not a long-term solution, nor is it good government. And now we pay the price.
How? Well, I can see from my rooftop half a dozen new condo complexes that have halted construction somewhere between 30% and 70% complete. These are structures that are lying fallow, so to speak - not producing jobs, homes, or tax revenue for the city. The companies that secured the building contracts all buggered off when the property owners, marginal investors all, ran out of money. The owners ran out of money because the banks ran out of money. The banks ran out of money because they were betting on the mortgages that the perspective homeowners who would have been buying a spot in Mayor Mike's highrise hell no longer can get.
I'd call it a vicious cycle if it wasn't so patently stupid. And just as stupid is that Bloomberg has been complicit in the whole deal with his rush to rezone everything into erstwhile Battery Park Cities, and an even bigger rush to tax the middle class into New Jersey.
Yet he says he's the man to lead us out of this crisis. This, the same man who said in May the best solution was to "pray that Wall Street does well."
Well, Mayor Mike, it hasn't, and you're clearly out of ideas. So I'll give you one: Let's pray that the city council (I'm looking at you, Christine Quinn) finds a set and overturns their own vote. No more rewarding the people who got us into this mess because it's politically expedient to do so, and no more short-sighted profiteers masquerading as populist heroes.
Mayor Mike, your experiment is over. Please, just let the clock run out.
Posts
