The Permanent Government: Who Really Rules New York?

Abstract

The central argument of this book, as its title indicates, is that New York is ruled by a that is responsible for the city's economic decline and its recent fiscal crisis. The permanent government is composed of an interlocking network of politicians, real estate developers, and bankers, whose members have used their political muscle to get the city to build highway and development projects that benefit them but have destroyed thousands of small businesses and dozens of once-healthy neighborhoods. As a result of this process, the poor have been deprived of jobs and have been forced onto the welfare rolls, and the middle class has been driven from the city and, hence, off the local tax rolls. Corrupt politicians have added further to New York's financial problems by permitting the owners of Medicaid mills and nursing home operators with political connections to overcharge the city for services they supposedly perform and by granting tax abatements to the city's largest banks and corporations. After contributing to New York's ruin in these ways, the banks concluded that it was no longer safe to own the city's securities; they unloaded billions of dollars of New York bonds from their portfolios in 19741 975, and this precipitated the fiscal crisis.