NYC fiscal crisis: canonizing Felix once again
I’ve got a review on The Nation‘s site of a new documentary on the NYC fiscal crisis, co-directed and -produced by Michael Rohatyn, son of the chief imposer of austerity 50 years ago, Felix Rohatyn. It was one of the opening battles of the class war from above, and the role of liberals like Felix in engineering it should never be forgotten.
A very useful crisis
This is the text of a talk I gave at New York City DSA’s night school, Socialists of NYC series, May 14, 2024 As the 1960s were turning into the 1970s, New York City was coming off a long economic boom. Sure, we’d lost 151,000 manufacturing jobs between 1950 and the 1969 peak, but that was almost exactly offset by a gain in finance, and overall employment in the city was up 391,000. There were signs of budgetary trouble starting in the mid-1960s, but those issues were patched over with a combination… Read More
Fresh audio product
Just added to my radio archive: August 31, 2017 Stan Collender on the ludicrous politics of the federal budget • Tim Shorrock on what’s behind North Korea’s apparent “irrationality”
Austerity & bankers’ coups: the NYC precedent
With the displacement of Greece’s elected government by Eurocrats acting in the interest of the country’s creditors, I thought this would be a good time to reprise the section of my 1997 book Wall Street that covers the New York City fiscal crisis of 1975, which was something of a dress rehearsal for the neoliberal austerity agenda that would go global in the 1980s. Certain celebrity academics are constantly cited for making this argument, but I was there first. You can download Wall Street for free by clicking here: Wall Street. This chapter, and this book, has… Read More
LBO News from Doug Henwood 