{"id":366130,"date":"2025-11-09T05:03:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-09T05:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/366130\/"},"modified":"2025-11-09T05:03:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T05:03:11","slug":"the-fiscal-budget-remaining-intact-remains-on-the-communist-leninist-policies-of-mayor-elect-mamdani","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/366130\/","title":{"rendered":"The fiscal budget remaining intact remains on the communist \u2018Leninist\u2019 policies of Mayor-elect Mamdani"},"content":{"rendered":"

Zohran Mamdani\u2019s victory-lap speech Tuesday night reeked of Vladimir Lenin<\/a> after Russia\u2019s 1917 communist revolution. <\/p>\n

But instead of commanding a Red Army, the mayor-elect<\/a> should be aware he will be facing lots of red ink.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s on top of some very strict and sensible financial rules put in place some 50 years ago \u2014 just in case a deranged Marxist ended up running New York City.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yes, socialism can sound rousing when it\u2019s pitched by a skilled orator. <\/p>\n

Mamdani spoke of soaking the rich \u2014 failing to mention, of course, that they\u2019re already paying some of the highest taxes in the country. <\/p>\n

He ranted how the poor will finally have their day \u2014 in a city that already doles out everything from free health care to subsidized housing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCharles Gasparino<\/p>\n

He also dared President Trump, who was in DC undoubtedly watching this spectacle, to \u201cturn up the volume\u201d as he doubled down on his vision: free buses, government groceries, more welfare and free trans medical treatment \u2014 even for children.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But NYC \u2014 with plenty of welfare statism already on the books \u2014 will never go full-on Soviet \u00adUnion.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because laws must be followed \u2014 even by a 34-year old backbench, lefty assemblyman with a degree in \u201cAfricana Studies\u201d who visions himself as the second coming of Fidel.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Those laws include something called \u201cThe Financial Emergency Act\u201d of 1975. <\/p>\n

It was the brainchild of former Gov. Hugh Carey and his outside adviser, the great philanthropist and investment banker Felix Rohatyn. <\/p>\n

It was designed to prevent another politician-made catastrophe like the fiscal crisis of the 1970s, when the Big Apple nearly went bankrupt and began to implode, fiscally and socially.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cops were laid off and garbage piled up because we had no money and no one would lend to us \u2014 the budget was such a mess, no one knew if they would get paid back. <\/p>\n

The mayor at the time was Abraham Beame but years of bad government, perverse spending and spotty accounting contributed to the mess.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u2018Drop dead!\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gerald Ford, the president while all of this went down, famously told the city there would be no bailout from DC: \u201cDrop Dead\u201d was the headline of the day.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We were on our own, but we had the political infrastructure to create reform: Carey, Rohatyn, civic leaders, bankers and more. <\/p>\n

They cobbled together a budgetary infrastructure that, believe it or not, lasts to this day.\u00a0<\/p>\n

New York City spends a lot of money; it has a $119 billion budget and a vast welfare state that includes health care for the indigent and much more. It also has huge amounts of debt to pay for this infrastructure \u2014 an amount almost as big as the entire budget itself is owed to bondholders.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Accordingly, it also has high taxes \u2014 so high that businesses and high earners were fleeing even before Mamdani\u2019s victory.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And yet we know where all the so-called bodies are buried because of the Financial Emergency Act. <\/p>\n

No matter how many freebees Mamdani doles out, how many grocery stores or rent-free apartments he creates, bondholders get first dibs on city tax revenues because Carey & Co. knew that we need them to keep buying debt or the place shuts down.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On top of that, Mamdani must balance his budget based on stringent Generally Accepted Accounting Principles; he cannot end the year with a budget deficit, or something known as the Financial Control Board takes over the city\u2019s fisc. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s chaired by Gov. Hochul<\/a>, who has said she won\u2019t raise taxes over fears of an exodus of the dreaded 1% who pay most of the bills.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of course the days of Hugh Carey and Felix Rohatyn are long gone. <\/p>\n

Hochul claims to be a moderate, but she has been caving to the mini-Mamdanis in the State Legislature for years. <\/p>\n

The comptroller is repped on the control board and he\u2019s a leftist. <\/p>\n

Mamdani has a seat as well and don\u2019t expect any help from the commissars on the City Council<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCharlie Gasparino has his finger on the pulse of where business, politics and finance meet\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSign up to receive On The Money by Charlie Gasparino in your inbox every Thursday.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

The business community is hollowed and politically irrelevant.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the law is the law. <\/p>\n

Our new mayor will face multibillion-dollar budget gaps that will need to be plugged in the next fiscal years. <\/p>\n

They will only grow if bank earnings sputter or Jamie Dimon moves more of JPMorgan to lower-tax locales like Texas. <\/p>\n

For Mamdani to pass his agenda and balance his budget, he will need a tax increase \u2014 and a vicious cycle will begin. <\/p>\n

Taxpayers will bolt. <\/p>\n

Bond downgrades will follow, heaping even more interest payments on the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n

No cakewalk\u00a0<\/p>\n

The budget deficit will grow, and Control Board oversight looms, over a budget crisis that could make the 1970s look like a cakewalk. <\/p>\n

Back then at least, many big businesses outside of banking were still domiciled here; the outer boroughs were populated with stable, middle-class neighborhoods.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But today much of that is gone. <\/p>\n

Even the stock exchange is diversifying, with a viable rival starting in Dallas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mamdani\u2019s power to run the city like Lenin will be severely diluted unless he wants to cede control to Hochul or ask his pal Donald Trump<\/a> for a bailout. <\/p>\n

When The Donald responds, I have a hunch how the headline will read.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zohran Mamdani\u2019s victory-lap speech Tuesday night reeked of Vladimir Lenin after Russia\u2019s 1917 communist revolution. But instead of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":366131,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[177104,5229,31361,64,69,21278,21279,16672,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,5341,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,177105,5301],"class_list":{"0":"post-366130","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-abraham-beame","9":"tag-america","10":"tag-budgets","11":"tag-business","12":"tag-donald-trump","13":"tag-hugh-carey","14":"tag-jamie-dimon","15":"tag-jpmorgan-chase","16":"tag-new-york","17":"tag-new-york-city","18":"tag-newyork","19":"tag-newyorkcity","20":"tag-ny","21":"tag-nyc","22":"tag-nyc-mayoral-election-2025","23":"tag-united-states","24":"tag-united-states-of-america","25":"tag-unitedstates","26":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","27":"tag-us","28":"tag-usa","29":"tag-vladimir-lenin","30":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115517994246672106","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}