This is the reason interview with Nick Gillespie.

Fifty years ago, in 1975, New York City almost went bankrupt.

What if I told you that the Big Apple's fiscal foo bar isn't just a cautionary tale from the past,

but a very real preview of what might happen again and soon?

And I'm not just talking about the surprise victory of self-described socialists

or on Mamdani in the city's Democratic primary for mayor, although that's part of it.

My guest today is Richard E. Farley, author of Drop Dead, a history of how the richest city in America

got addicted to spending, saturated in debt, and crashed the

municipal bond market, and then managed to get a federal bailout in the nick of time. Farley

argues that the same conditions are re-emerging today, runaway budgets, gimmicky accounting,

over-promised entitlements, and politicians more interested in ideology than basic arithmetic.

And Farley wrote all this before the rise of Mamdani, who promises to blow spending through

the roof, enact new taxes, and create masses of new regulations. If you want to understand

what it takes to bankrupt a city, listen up. Because New York and a city closer to you might be sleepwalking into

another fiscal disaster. And this time, there might not be a bailout waiting. Here is the

Reason interview with Richard E. Farley. Richard E. Farley, thanks for talking to Reason.

Thank you for having me. You work in the world of finance and all of this.

What is your best estimate of if Mondani wins in the fall and he gets his, you know, he runs

the table, he gets to do everything you want?

What happens to the population of New York?

Well, let's talk about what happens to the fiscal situation and the taxes, because that

will drive a lot of it.

...