"A Nice Whipping Boy": New York City Municipal Crisis and Risk Federalization

Alexander Freitas, UC Davis

This paper challenges the influential thesis that the 1970s New York City fiscal crisis was the crucible in which the neoliberal project was forged to restore the power of financial elites. Through a triangulated analysis of archival records from the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation’s “Oral History Project” and The New York Times Article Archive, this study argues that empirical evidence suggests motives alternative to a coherent or premeditated class politics. Instead, this record suggests a far more contingent and complex process: ideological divisions within Ford’s administration, significant political conflicts and constraints at federal and local levels, and a growing assessment of national – perhaps even global – financial risk. The resolution of the crisis, therefore, is perhaps better understood as a pragmatic outcome of federalizing risk.

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 Presented in Session 180. Dollars, Debt, and Financial Risk