What’s the point of having a high muckety-muck like Chuck Schumer sitting in the US Senate if he refuses to fight for New York’s best interests?
And that goes double for his hapless little poodle, Kirsten Gillibrand.
Congress is poised to rip the heart out of New York’s economy — i.e., Wall Street — while Sens. Schumer and Gillibrand stand by dumb as fence posts.
Draconian regulation and confiscatory taxation are in the works. That’s very good news for London and Hong Kong — but for New York, not so much.
Is it that Schumer, Gillibrand and senior house members like Jerry Nadler and Carolyn Maloney simply don’t care? Or do they simply want to kill Wall Street and be done with it?
How could they possibly remain silent in the face of the Democrats’ new TV ad, which began airing yesterday: “Trillions in savings wiped out,” it says. “Millions of jobs lost. Homes and businesses foreclosed on. Wall Street’s risk and greed cost us trillions.” The ad demands “strict new rules to hold Wall Street accountable.”
Now, no reasonable person would deny that Wall Street has earned added oversight. But this must take into account the fact that in the Internet age, foreign financial-sector competition is a very real threat to New York’s last remaining top-dollar industry.
Meanwhile, what of the pols’ role in pushing banks to make bad decisions — through policies backed by folks like . . . Chuck Schumer?
No mention of Schumer’s resistance to slowing the growth of shaky housing loans, which accelerated the nation’s financial collapse.
(Those outlays grew materially, by the way, thanks in part to key decisions by Bill Clinton’s housing secretary: now-state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.)
Schumer, a key Dem, could have pushed to mute that anti-New York ad.
And he could ensure that pending legislation doesn’t unreasonably handcuff New York’s financial firms.
Nor has there been a peep from Gillibrand. Nadler, whose district actually includes Wall Street, is quieter than a library.
Ditto for Maloney, who sits on the House Financial Services Committee. “Financial services is the most important industry for the New York City economy and the biggest job creator in the region,” her Web site notes.
Indeed, in recent years, Wall Street has generated as much as a third of the city’s income — and a fifth of all tax revenues.
“As the senior New York Democrat on the [committee], I believe one of my chief tasks is to maintain the preeminence of New York City as the world’s financial center,” Maloney claims.
Is that so? Then she needs to prove it — by getting vocal. By leading the charge.
Monday, Mayor Bloomberg challenged local pols to do more: “The bashing of Wall Street is something that should worry everybody,” he said. “We need the New York delegation to be out there protecting our businesses.”
If Schumer, Gillibrand & Co. won’t stand up for Wall Street, they won’t stand up for New York.
For better or worse, they are one and the same.