, the Manhattan Institute's seven-year-old website focusing on New York budget and finance issues, has been updated and expanded into a blog featuring daily commentary by two of the Institute's leading analysts—E.J. McMahon and Nicole Gelinas. McMa Read More
As a postscript to Nicole’s most recent post, which focused on New York City, it should be noted that New York’s state government doesn't immediately face a California-style cash crunch, either. The state stopped issuing short-term notes Read More
California may have to ask the federal government for a $7 billion loan by the end of the month just to pay for basic services like police and firefighting, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last Thursday. New York City readers may have shuddered, as the r Read More
The financial-market implosion and the coming transformation of the securities industry pose a risk to the national economy. But they especially imperil New York State, which for decades has built its budgets on the expectation of raising ever-greater revenues from a Wall Street that now no longer exists. Read More
Just belatedly realized something in crunching the equity- and debt-underwriting numbers: Between 2005 and 2007, American financial institutions produced $5.4 trillion worth of mortgage-backed and other asset-backed securities not Read More
As E.J. notes in the post below this one, Gov. Paterson says he thinks Wall Street bonuses could be down as much as 60 percent, higher than his budget office's expected 43 percent decline. To put this estimate in perspective: after the tech bubble Read More
After wavering on the issue in recent weeks, Governor Paterson today seemed to rule out tax increases as part of the solution to the state's growing budget problem -- at least for the next 18 months. "I don't think there should be any taxes at thi Read More
As shown below, the highest-earning 1 percent of taxpayers (those with incomes above $750,000 or so as of 2007) accounted for nearly 40 percent of New York's total state income tax liability last year -- up from around 27 percent in the mid-1990s. � Read More