Fifty years in the past this month, President Gerald Ford figuratively instructed New York Metropolis to “drop dead” in rebuffing Metropolis Corridor’s request for an emergency mortgage to forestall the Large Apple from falling out of business. However he would rapidly change his thoughts.
Reuters
Fifty years in the past this month, a president of the USA famously instructed New York Metropolis to “drop dead” (as one tabloid put it) in rebuffing Metropolis Corridor’s request for an emergency mortgage to forestall the Large Apple from falling out of business.
Gerald Ford made that denial as a result of he believed the town shouldn’t be rewarded for poor fiscal administration, and that potential financial failure would function a lesson New York would always remember. Nonetheless, inside weeks of his determination, Ford reversed course and agreed to offer federal loans to maintain the town afloat, with situations that mandated higher fiscal administration.
The change additionally got here as a result of Ford was heading into an election yr, and there was an amazing quantity of political stress on him to maintain the nation’s largest metropolis solvent. New York is the financial capital of the world; if the town lacks the capital to fund its police, hearth, mass transit, hospitals, colleges and different essential operations, bodily spoil would quickly observe, adopted by financial collapse on a a lot bigger scale than the town itself.
Ford made that realization and, in the long run, did the suitable factor for each New York Metropolis and America. The query earlier than us now could be whether or not the present president will keep in mind that lesson.
Donald Trump has repeatedly tried to defund New York Metropolis this yr — its transit system, its colleges, its police drive, and extra — to advance his agenda. He’s rattling the financial saber with the mayor’s race developing, threatening to make additional cuts to New York in the event that they elect one candidate over one other.
In a democracy, the folks have the ultimate say. New Yorkers will make up their minds on Election Day and reside with the results of that alternative, simply as they’ve finished each 4 years for greater than a century. This metropolis, nonetheless, shouldn’t be underneath fixed risk of financial or political retribution due to the alternatives the voters make on the poll field.
What have to be understood, nonetheless, is that although many issues have modified over the past 50 years, one fixed stays: New York is the financial capital of world.
Our metropolis, with an 8 million inhabitants, faces quite a few challenges. These challenges, nonetheless, will multiply exponentially if a president makes misguided choices to defund our police, our transit system, our colleges, and different components of our authorities.
If New York’s financial system and actual property market plummet on account of such defunding, so too will Wall Avenue. If Wall Avenue tanks, the American financial system will observe go well with. The ache shall be equally felt in each state, no matter who they voted for within the final election.
Any president who tells our metropolis to “drop dead” is actually telling the American financial system to do the identical.
