John Crudele

John Crudele

Metro

FBI ‘probing’ Bronx political machine

The FBI is investigating The Bronx.

Not the whole borough. Just the way politics is conducted, according to a pair of reliable sources.

And that could prove interesting since power in Albany shifted to Bronx politicians once Sheldon Silver — arrested by FBI agents in January on charges he accepted $4 million in bribes and kickbacks — gave up his role as speaker of the New York Assembly.

Silver, from the Lower East Side of Manhattan, stepped down as speaker on Feb. 3. Taking over as Assembly speaker — one of the most powerful politicians in the state — was Carl Heastie, a longtime Bronx political power.

Federal investigators are looking at voter fraud and financial mismanagement in the borough, sources tell me.

It’s unclear who the target is, or if there is more than one. But I’m told that the investigation is — at least in part — spurred on by information provided to Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara.

Bharara, whose jurisdiction includes The Bronx, is on a bit of a crusade. He was incensed, sources said, when Gov. Andrew Cuomo last year abruptly shut down the one-year-old Moreland Commission, which was investigating public corruption.

I’m also told that FBI agents from upstate New York, and not Manhattan, are working the case.

Depending on the outcome, any probe could be embarrassing to Heastie and Ruben Diaz Jr., the Bronx borough president who is considered Heastie’s mentor, as well as the Albany establishment in general.

The impetus for the probe could have been information provided to Bharara by opponents of Diaz, one of whom I spoke with last week. Included in the material was evidence of alleged voter fraud — particularly alleged fake signatures on voter petitions.

I’m hearing that one document turned over to Bharara shows that some candidates in certain Bronx districts got more votes than the number of voters who went into the booths.

There is also a question about the use of campaign funds for personal purposes, a source tells me.

Stay tuned. This could get interesting quickly.


Jobs to get a rise out of Fed

Job growth in January was heralded as the greatest thing since Beanie Babies. But, as I showed in Saturday’s column, it wasn’t.

And if misleading the public was the extent of the harm, you might not even care. Americans have been fooled by statistical anomalies before and they will be fooled again.

But right now, the Federal Reserve is considering raising interest rates. And the Fed will undoubtedly use the 257,000-job gain in January as one of the excuses for boosting borrowing costs.

And when Janet Yellen’s Fed makes the move, the dollar’s value will rise even more compared to other currencies. That may be good for American tourists, but it is bad news for companies that do business internationally and for the US trade deficit.

Workers will probably be laid off by these multinational companies because of the strong dollar. Business might even shelve expansion plans if borrowing costs go up. And that will hold down job growth in the future.

Oil and gasoline prices might even rise because Wall Street thinks the US economy is looking better.

These are all the possible consequences of what could turn out to be nothing more than a bad seasonal adjustment of the employment figures by the Labor Department.

One Labor economist, speaking off the record, admitted to me weeks ago that December’s numbers, as well as November’s, had seasonal adjustment problems.

If Labor has spotted a flaw in its calculation, maybe it should say something before it causes a lot of bad, unintended consequences.

Because I guarantee this: Labor’s seasonal adjustments will come back to haunt us in the future when they start making the economy look worse than it really is.


After the seasonal adjustment, Labor also said 45,900 jobs were added by retailers. That figure is preposterous, since retailers always have massive layoffs after Christmas. This claim alone should cause a Congressional investigation.