Nicole Gelinas has written about urban economics, infrastructure, finance, and governance for nearly a decade. She is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute's City Journal magazine and a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) charterholder. Her book, [italics]After the Fall: How to Save the Economy from Wall Street -- and Washington[end-ital], will be out this fall.
It looks like the state of New York state is: “clean out of ideas.” Gov. Cuomo’s sophomore State of the State speech yesterday would have been breathtakingly cynical — if he’d given it 15 years ago. Coming in 2012,...
January 05, 2012 12:00 AMSo Gov. Cuomo hikes the state’s top marginal-income-tax rate by 29 percent for three years, and the city’s business community says it’s terrific. Huh? The business community — including many big banks — has long urged...
December 12, 2011 12:00 AM
The most overlooked losers in Gov. Cuomo’s $2 billion tax-hike deal are Gotham’s commuters: Some $320 million of the tax hike will go to buying the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority freedom from...
December 08, 2011 12:00 AMFuture city pensioners might wonder whether Comptroller John Liu, a guy who isn’t being up-front about his own funds, is being truthful about the disposition of their retirement benefits. You’d think that the person...
November 21, 2011 12:00 AMLast week, an amazing thing happened: Free markets did their job of disciplining finance. That should happen more often. The reason it doesn’t is that neither party in Washington is willing to make it happen. The first...
November 07, 2011 12:00 AM
Last week, the feds indicted 11 Long Island Rail Road retirees and their alleged associates in a “massive fraud scheme” to steal a billion dollars through fake disability claims. But the bigger outrage is that for...
November 01, 2011 12:00 AM
This year, New York City taxpayers will fork over $8.4 billion for city workers’ pensions, up from $1.3 billion a decade ago. City pension costs are a crisis -- one that the city’s fiscal watchdog, John Liu, should...
October 24, 2011 12:00 AMIf the Zuccotti kids want to protest Wall Street bailouts, they should go occupy the Yankees’ luxury parking garages in The Bronx. Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. wants to give the garages’ private investors a fat-cat...
October 17, 2011 12:00 AM
Tick-tock. Thanks to Washington’s support for big banks, New York City has been a cocoon of prosperity compared to the rest of the nation over the last three years. But banks can’t stay on the dole forever -- and the...
October 07, 2011 12:00 AM
Last week, President Obama told lawmakers that they should pass his “American Jobs Act” because “there’s a bridge that needs repair between Ohio and Kentucky that’s on one of the busiest trucking routes in North America...
September 21, 2011 12:00 AMTo see how thoroughly New York’s pre-9/11 culture infected the city’s “recovery,” look at what happened to the Liberty Bonds that the feds awarded us for rebuilding. After the attacks, President George W. Bush and...
September 06, 2011 12:00 AM
New York did pretty well in Hurricane Irene -- but with one big sign of trouble for some future disaster that doesn’t peter out. The best news is that MTA management and workers performed admirably. For the first time...
August 30, 2011 12:00 AMAmerica is supposed to be the world’s economic and financial leader. How much more will we discredit ourselves before President Obama does his job: lead us out of a historic crisis that is gnawing through our growth,...
August 08, 2011 12:00 AM
MTA chief Jay Walder yesterday re leased a $12.7 billion budget for next year that, he says, "achieves stability" without chopping service. Sure, stability -- thanks to lots of borrowing. All it takes is a nudge from a...
July 28, 2011 12:00 AMMTA chief Jay Walder dropped a bombshell on Gov. Cuomo and the metro area yesterday, abruptly an nouncing that he's leaving in October after less than two years on the job and just a third of the way through his term....
July 22, 2011 12:00 AM
City Hall sent Deputy Mayor Bob Steel yesterday to a Citizens Budget Commission breakfast to pitch public-pension reform. Steel gave a commanding presentation -- but couldn't overcome the timidity of his boss' plan....
July 15, 2011 12:00 AM
The average MTA worker made $71,237 last year in salary, wages and other cash pay, according to new data posted by SeeThroughNY, a project of the Empire Center, on its Web site. This sum and other MTA salaries...
July 13, 2011 12:00 AM
For almost two years, federal stimulus cash has kept New York City's economy going like gangbusters. We shouldn't say thanks, though. Being on the dole will end up hurting Gotham. Since 2009, the city has gained...
July 07, 2011 12:00 AM
Let's all give a round of applause to the deputy mayors responsible for New York City's final $68.9 billion budget -- Michael Mulgrew and Lillian Roberts. OK -- Mulgrew and Roberts don't actually work in Mayor...
June 29, 2011 12:00 AM
Why is last week's surprise release of 60 million bar rels of oil from govern ment reserves bad news? Because it's the West's -- and President Obama's -- last hope to goose the economy. Obama and European leaders are...
June 27, 2011 12:00 AM
For mass-transit riders, the good news is that the state Senate spent time talking about the MTA this week. The bad news? The most substantive conclusion was on new MTA board member Fernando Ferrer's facial hair....
June 17, 2011 12:00 AM
As Gov. Cuomo and the Legislature finish up spring business, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver wants to tie a suburban property-tax cap to renewal of rent regulations in the city. OK -- but, while we're "linking" things,...
June 07, 2011 12:00 AMThis afternoon, the "May 12 Coalition" will take to the streets of Lower Manhattan with a demand for Mayor Bloomberg: "Make Big Banks and Millionaires Pay." But we'd all pay: The coalition's plan centers on a massive...
May 12, 2011 12:00 AM
Last Friday, Mayor Bloomberg updated his budget proposal for the fiscal year that starts in July: The city will spend some $49.7 billion of its own money. With state and federal cash, the total is $68.9 billion. The...
May 09, 2011 12:00 AM
Osama Bin Laden's death, at the hands of Americans who were likely the last people he saw, is an achievement for America. But it's also a jarringly quick reminder that nothing will wrap up that day into something in...
May 03, 2011 12:00 AM
Will New York's leaders watch as residents slowly abandon the state, taking their assets and income with them? One test: Will Gov. Cuomo pledge to build a new Tappan Zee Bridge -- before the old one decays beyond...
April 20, 2011 12:00 AM
New York’s rent laws expire in June. In pushing to “renew and strengthen” them, Democratic lawmakers are seizing the opportunity to show they care about tenants. Gov. Cuomo, too, has an opportunity: to treat the city’s...
April 17, 2011 12:00 AMNew York has controlled the rents on “private” apartments since after World War I. The city determines annual rent increases for half of its roughly 2 million rentals. Another nearly 800,000 apartments are “free market,...
March 27, 2011 12:00 AM
New York City's rent laws expire later this spring -- giving state politicians a chance to make life worse for the 5.5 million city folk who don't own their homes. The city hasn't had anything close to a free housing...
March 22, 2011 12:00 AM
New York pols aren't about to eliminate most collec tive-bargaining rights and automatic dues collection for public-sector unions, as Wisconsin just did. But if they care about the public good, they could take some...
March 14, 2011 12:00 AM
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