Financial Crisis

The biggest flaw in the Administration bailout package: It could all happen again. The system doesn’t need just fixing, it needs decentralizing. Financial institutions should be big enough to fail—and never any bigger. We need compartmentalization, also known as federalism.  read more »

New York long was a product of the harbor economy. Before there was a Times Square or a Grand Central Station, Lower Manhattan, then ringed with docks, was oriented to the railroads and factories of the Jersey coast to its west and the merchants and manufacturers of Brooklyn across the East River. The decline of Lower Manhattan as an economic engine is in large measure a reflection of the fall of that harbor economy as first Manhattan and then its partners in Brooklyn and Jersey City de-industrialized.  read more »

From the beginning of the mortgage crisis New York and other financial centers have acted as if they were immune to the suffering in the rest of country. As suburbs, exurbs and hard-scrabble out of the way urban neighborhoods suffered with foreclosures and endured predictions of their demise, the cognitive elites in places like Manhattan felt confident about their own prospects, property values and jobs. So what if the rubes in Phoenix, Las Vegas, Tampa and Riverside all teetered on the brink?  read more »

By Bernard L. Schwartz, Sherle R. Schwenninger, New America Foundation

The American economy is in trouble. Battered and bruised by the collapsing housing and credit bubbles, and by high oil and food prices, it is having trouble finding its footing. The stimulus medicine the Federal Reserve and Congress administered earlier this year is already wearing off, while home prices are still falling and unemployment continues to creep upward.  read more »

The takeover of Merrill Lynch by Charlotte-based Bank of America represents another step in the emergence of a true full-tilt competitor to New York as a financial capital. Already dominant in commercial banking, the acquisition places the North Carolina metropolis into the first ranks of cities in wealth management.  read more »

With the sale of Lehman Brothers seen as imminent — possibly as soon as this weekend — New York's commercial real estate market is bracing itself for the loss of a key financier responsible for tens of billions of dollars in commercial loans.

"It would be one less major player," a commercial real estate finance expert at New York University Schack Institute of Real Estate, Lawrence Longua, said. "It is probably more of a psychological effect, but it is one more piece of bad news."  read more »

Mayor Bloomberg needs to prepare the city for the crash of the Wall Street gravy train.  read more »