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With the passing of 38th President Gerald Ford, many are examining how a fateful Daily News affected the New York City's economic recovery in the 1970s and Ford's own re-election hopes.
The city neared bankruptcy in 1975, and when Mayor Abe Beame asked Ford for federal aid, Ford refused to bail out the city, taking a hard line that mobilized "New York’s civic, business and labor leaders to rally bankers in the United States and abroad, who feared their own investments would be harmed if New York defaulted on its debt," according to the NY Times. And two months later, Ford did provide $2.3 billion in federal aid to the city. From the Daily News:
Felix Rohatyn, one of the chief architects in steering the city through the fiscal crisis, described Ford as a "hugely decent and nice person."Further, many believe that if NYC had gotten the earlier aid package, the city would never have recovered.Rohatyn said Ford was poorly served by a slew of advisers - including Alan Greenspan, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld - in his initial handling of New York's fiscal crisis.
"New York City was going to be their symbol of what could happen if you let liberalism take hold in a big city," Rohatyn said.
He said the President relented just days before the city planned to file bankruptcy.
"He did change his mind, which is a tough thing to do for a political leader," Rohatyn said. "And for that we owe him a great deal."
And the Daily News has a look at how the headline was created. The managing editor, the late William Brink, told the New Yorker, "What I wanted to do was to get across the idea that Ford hadn't just declined to help us, he had in effect consigned us to the scrap heap." Brink's earlier ideas were "Ford Refuses Aid to City" and "Ford Says No to City Aid," until he came upon a five-word headline that might be the best ever (this side of Wacko Jacko heads).
Even though The News endorsed him for President in 1976, the headline and Ford's dismissive attitude swayed enough voters to give Jimmy Carter New York State's 41 electoral votes.The Daily News has a PDF of the front page and article from October 30, 1975.Had Ford carried the state, he would have carried the election.
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yep, investment bankers have no sense of civic responsibility or community obligation, they only care about they're investments. scum of the earth.
It would be nice if you had perhaps backed up the claim that an earlier aid package would not have helped the city recover. At least a link?
(mobilized "New York’s civic, business and labor leaders to rally bankers in the United States and abroad...")
I believe this is how the earlier recovery package wouldn't have saved the city: no one within the community would have done what needed to be done in order to spur the actual economy instead of just taking federal money to pay off debts. Seems pretty straight-forward.
I haven't clicked the link, but I know that the bailout provided came with an interest rate 1% above the national borrowing rate that actually hurt the state and city more than actually helping it -- a fraction of the bailout handed to Chrysler! Further, the EFCB and MAC were put in charge of the budget (and borrowing requests, and union contracts), removing power from the city and state and placing it instead in the hands of more powerful financial interests.
In retrospect, Ford was probably right in taking a hard-line against the city and state, forcing the politics of retrenchment to take form and a new type of cutback management to thrive in the decades that followed, that essentially made the city what it is today. Cities were at their worst when they depended on the federal government for this nonsense.
My favorite part of the headline:
Stocks Skid; Dow Down 12 Points
Remember when 12 points on the Dow meant something?
The Dow Jones Average for 1975 was 802.49. So 12 points would have been like 1.5%.