Governor Paterson’s proposed budget deficit reduction plan includes a $300 million raid on the coffers of the Battery Park City Authority (BPCA), which would be required to issue new bonds and send the proceeds to Albany.   But BPCA board member Charles Urstadt and former authority spokesman Avrum Hyman have a better idea, which they describe on the op-ed page of today’s New York Times:

As two of the officials who helped carry out Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller’s 1967 mandate to build a Lower Manhattan community on landfill in the Hudson River, and considering the unquestionable success of what he proposed evident in today’s vibrant Battery Park City, we believe that New York City, which has a little-remembered option to buy the entire property for $1, should hand over that dollar bill. Let’s finally make Battery Park City, with its 10,000 or so residents and 92 acres of businesses, housing and beautifully maintained green spaces, a part of the city to which it really belongs.

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Attention New York: on the eve (roughly) of the one-year anniversary of Lehman Brothers’ collapse, a new report from J.P.Morgan in London opines that because of the effects of eight likely financial-regulatory changes worldwide, “what is certain … is that global [investment] banking profitability will decline,” not just temporarily but structurally (that is, even after the recession is over).   (more…)

In a much-linked article, the Washington Post reports that “the biggest” of the nation’s too-big-to-fail “banks are even bigger” today, with three big banks alone owning more than 30 percent of the nation’s deposits, and four big banks issuing “one of every two mortgages and about two of every three credit cards.”

The banks likely will get even bigger in the future, despite supposed regulatory constrictions, because government guarantees and the cheap money they generate speak louder than words. (more…)

If the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is right, Governor David Paterson’s economic and fiscal projections for New York State are not gloomy enough.  The CBO expects higher unemployment and a somewhat slower recovery than Paterson’s budget has projected over the next few years, which means the revenue estimates in Paterson’s budget are still too high.

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Also in today’s Times is a brilliantly satirical op-ed written to illustrate the foolishness of what my colleague Heather Mac Donald would probably call part of the victimology culture. The author, Linda Hirshman, notes that there will be “almost no women” on Obama’s “road to recovery,” because women don’t much go for highway jobs. (more…)

Yesterday was another watershed day for New York and for American financial capitalism. (more…)

IBM chief Sam Palmisano gave a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations today in which he proposed a private-public “smart systems”-led recovery for the economy. (more…)