On the heels of Governor Paterson's gloomy budget update, state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli the state's Common Retirement Fund has lost 20 percent of its value since April 1. That would translate into a drop of $31 billion from the March 31 level Read More
Governor David Paterson is right on the money in calling for "bold and aggressive action to reduce state spending" to deal with the severe and worsening fiscal crisis detailed in today's . At this point, after months of dire warnings, there's hardl Read More
The city has released on the New York City residential condominium market, while analysts at the private firm Portfolio and Property Research (via and ) have released some projections for the metro-area office-building market. Taken together, the ne Read More
Harvard's Ed Glaeser, also a Manhattan Institute senior fellow, and Wharton's Joseph Gyourko have an (free registration required) of the likely futility of proposed government efforts to stop the slide in housing prices. The profs specifically Read More
Even as states and municipalities face unprecedented capital-markets pressure as they try to issue new debt, Standard and Poor's currenty has no states on ratings-watch negative, or even with a negative outlook. Read More
From my presentation at yesterday's Manhattan Institute "Market Meltdown" conference, a chart depicting the 10-year trend in public pension fund contributions by New York State and City taxpayers: Pension contributions over the past eight years ha Read More
From Stephen Green, chairman of London-based HSBC, the world's largest bank: "I believe the direction is clear: regional capital markets will develop and more of the capital generated in the fast-growing emerging markets will stay closer to home on t Read More
At a Crain's breakfast this morning, City Comptroller (and 2009 mayoral candidate) Bill Thompson acknowledged a vital truth. "Budget growth has lately been out of balance with the growth of our local economy. Had we started to tie city spending to [ Read More
New York City government has barely begun to bring its spending into line with post-meltdown reality—and Council Speaker Christine Quinn is already saying "we'll need to look at personal income-tax changes," among "other ideas," for closing budget gaps that are likely to swell beyond $8 billion over the next two years. Read More
As suspected and reported anecdotally, municipal-bond issuance fell off the charts in September and October. Municipal Market Advisors, in its weekly outlook today, notes that such bond issuance was 54 percent below last year's levels for September a Read More
With the city comptroller's office now a loss of 35,000 jobs in New York-based investment banking and other financial services occupations, what's the next thing that will drive profits and employment in a Wall Street recovery? In a recent "On th Read More
As everyone rushes to conclude that America's financial-regulatory regime is completely broken, the FT has to say (registration required) about hedge funds whose UK-based assets -- estimated at $65 billion dollars -- were frozen in the Lehma Read More