In retrospect, there was an inevitability to the Mamdani victory on Tuesday. He promised the world to people who were desperate to believe he would deliver and had nothing to lose if he didn’t. If they had little before, how could he make things much worse? At least he offered them hope that maybe he would deliver.
Mamdani ran on a theme of tackling the high cost of living in New York City and returning the city to affordability – and overwhelmingly won. But it is one thing to do what you have to do in order to attract voters and another to govern the municipal colossus that is New York City. Indeed, his specific proposals to freeze rents for tenants in rent-stabilized apartments, making public transportation free, universal childcare, and raising the minimum wage to $30 an hour, would seem to lead to fiscal disaster for the city.
Nor will we have to await his taking office to begin to feel the brunt of his fiscal follies. While the terms revenue anticipation notes (“rans”) and tax anticipation notes (“tans”) are not familiar terms, so-called rans and tans are the bedrock of New York’s ability to finance its operations. And they depend on the city being able to sell municipal financial paper. It works like this:
Rans and tans are notes sold by the city to secure short-term borrowing in order to solve problems associated with the mismatch between the receipt of property taxes or other revenues and ongoing expenditures. That is, tax revenues are received in two primary installments during the year, while expenditures must be made on a daily basis for the government to operate.
However, this all depends on there being a market for the notes. And therein lies the rub. It is hard to believe that Mamdani’s pie-in-the-sky, budget-busting spending proposals will not discourage investor participation.
So Mamdani will have to face reality even before the get-go. Hopefully Mamdani will abandon ideology and embrace things as they actually exist and not how he would wish them to be.
Perhaps this looming comeuppance will also hearten the Jewish community that a Mamdani monetary epiphany will extend to not engaging in his virtual war against some Jews, specifically those Jews who don’t see eye to eye with him (e.g., Zionist Jews and Jews unwilling to be weak-kneed in order to curry favor – the Jews that voted in very large numbers for other candidates; see article on page 2), and we should not leave the city. (Of course, aliyah is always a great idea for those who can – yesterday, today and tomorrow, regardless of who is in office. And we very strongly encourage it.)
After all, he will need help wherever he can get it. And we Jews are reputed to know something about money – especially by his crowd.