Ah, it’s getting easier to long for the good old days — when Gotham was dominated by machine politics, corruption and fiscal mismanagement.
Yes, it led to the dreaded fiscal crisis of the mid- to late 1970s, near bankruptcy and a deep city recession that hit hard at the working class in the five boroughs and even the suburbs, including my own family in Westchester.
How the city fell into this fiscal abyss, which actually lasted a few years into the next decade, and climbed out is all laid out in gruesome detail in the extremely readable prose by Rich Farley, a lawyer who works on financial transactions.
He’s the author of “Drop Dead; How a Coterie of Corrupt Politicians, Bankers, Lawyers, Spinmeisters, and Mobsters Bankrupted New York, Got Bailed Out, Blamed the President and went back to Business as Usual (And it Might Be Happening Again),” released in April.
The title is a mouthful and it’s not 100% accurate.
New York City never declared bankruptcy.
There’s a debate that it even technically defaulted on its debt when the trigger for the crisis — investors losing confidence in the city’s financial condition — boycotted buying city bonds.
But those are mere quibbles as I dive into this trenchant historical account of how Gotham — with all its wealth and commerce on Wall Street and real estate and then a lot more — was brought to the brink, a near Detroit-style fiscal meltdown.
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In reading Farley’s work, it does dawn on me that for all the grease and grime of those years, the city was immensely savable.
The financial crisis did come to an end, but not until after a surge in crime because we couldn’t afford cops, arson (The Bronx was literally burning), and unemployment (people like my dad, who lost his construction job because of a halt to city infrastructure spending).
It was fixed, at least for decades, after the political leadership did re-establish itself as a stabilizing force.
The saviors
The saviors were people like Hugh Carey, the governor, who instituted reforms that repaired the confidence of investors and businesses.
And Mario Cuomo (yes, that Mario Cuomo), who would succeed Carey and keep a close eye on his hometown for three terms during what’s best described as a mini renaissance.
And an upstart US congressman named Ed Koch, who inspired confidence that the city must and could survive.
He ran for mayor on the slogan “How Am I Doin’?” and won three terms.
Don’t forget that federal prosecutor named Rudy Giuliani, who took on the mob and municipal corruption with equal zeal, set the stage for becoming mayor and ushered in a real rebirth in Gotham of low crime and a booming business community.
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There was also an engaged business community — people like investment banker Felix Rohatyn — that wasn’t afraid to step up and say enough of the nonsense.
And here’s why I would love to turn back the clock, as crazy as that might sound.
None of the gumption shown by those civic and political leaders is evident anymore, as a more serious existential threat looms — worse than “Fat Tony” Salerno of Genovese fame, Tammany’s Carmine DeSapio and graft in the Parking Violations Bureau.
All of their lawlessness was snuffed out as the establishment re-established order.
The fiscal Armageddon I fear comes in the form of a smiling socialist named Zohran Mamdani, who just won the city’s Democratic mayoral primary over the son of the great Mario Cuomo.
Mamdani outhustled Andrew Cuomo at every turn.
Based on what we know, Mamdani seems like an honest fellow, which is good — and very, very bad.
Bad because he’s a noxious breed of politician who isn’t afraid to promote his weird behavior and sell it as gold to an uninformed electorate.
Even worse, no one in our political class or the business elite has really stepped up to call him out.
He wants to tax to death those businesses and wealth producers that remain and employ our working class.
He wants to give stuff out for free like bus rides.
He wants to socialize grocery stores.
He wants to defund the police, a sure recipe for more business flight.
He has not disavowed the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which many New Yorkers can reasonably interpret (as it was during those vile campus protests) as a form of antisemitism.
There are more than 1 million Jews living in the Big Apple, but how much did Cuomo make of Mamdani’s acquiescence to this sick rhetoric?
Very little.
NYC is still the epicenter of finance, the nation’s largest bank run by Jamie Dimon.
He has his headquarters and home here.
But not a word from America’s banker.
In this city and state led by Dems, seasoned politicians — people like Chuck Schumer, a Brooklyn assemblyman and later congressman who is now US Senate minority leader — have been quiet as a mouse, except for congratulating Mamdani on his victory.
Cuomo and Schumer should ask themselves if their precious political futures are worth not calling out this nonsense and angering the AOC wing of the party.
Business leaders need to ask themselves if the price of doing business here is worth allowing a lefty loon to run the epicenter of capitalism.
Our budget is in better shape from the morass of the 1970s.
If you look at the numbers as I do, NYC is always a recession away from trouble.
Couple that with rank socialist policies like defunding the police, and you see how things can and will go sideways if Mamdani wins — and you will miss the mess of the 1970s.
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