{"id":316012,"date":"2025-11-30T07:55:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-30T07:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/316012\/"},"modified":"2025-11-30T07:55:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-30T07:55:08","slug":"nyc-pension-system-will-be-in-better-hands-after-brad-landers-departure-as-city-comptroller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/316012\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC pension system will be in better hands after Brad Lander’s departure as city comptroller"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brad Lander<\/a> won\u2019t be New York City comptroller much longer \u2014 and that\u2019s good news for Gotham\u2019s rank and file.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just because Lander is a knee-jerk leftist who rivals Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani<\/a> when it comes to his out-of-touch patter on economic policy. <\/p>\n

He\u2019s also a dullard seemingly unaware of the core function of the job he\u2019s held for the last four years.<\/p>\n

Lander, as the city\u2019s chief fiscal officer, is the fiduciary, investment adviser and custodian of the city\u2019s $300 billion pension fund system. <\/p>\n

He\u2019s supposed to make sure the funds are invested in securities that grow in value so they can \u201cfully fund\u201d the retirement accounts of all the city\u2019s police, firefighters and teachers.<\/p>\n

Those accounts are not fully funded, and the shortfalls are poised to grow once Mamdani gets into office.<\/p>\n

\t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCharles Gasparino<\/p>\n

Recall the mayor-elect\u2019s pledges to raise taxes and turn the city into Moscow-on-the-Hudson, which will certainly cause more businesses and high earners to leave.<\/p>\n

Now Lander wants to oust BlackRock from managing city retirement money because it refuses to embrace his weird green energy agenda, which envisions a future of windmills and bicycles along the streets of New York instead of cars \u2014 and energy bills that no one can afford.<\/p>\n

Consider: BlackRock doesn\u2019t suck at money management, it\u2019s actually quite good at it. <\/p>\n

Its CEO, Larry Fink<\/a>, is considered among the best risk managers in the business.<\/p>\n

BlackRock\u2019s big crime is that it doesn\u2019t want to be an accomplice to Lander\u2019s wacky, unrealizable and maybe illegal campaign on the climate \u2014 i.e. reducing carbon emissions with brute force.<\/p>\n

In Lander\u2019s mind, the stocks of companies that drill for oil, frack natural gas, keep our lights on or make sure the AC works in the summer are pure evil.<\/p>\n

The comptroller, of course, prefers those that embrace green energy \u2014 like those useless windmills off the coast of New Jersey that give the state some of the highest electricity bills on the planet.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, Lander literally wants the city to demand that all of BlackRock\u2019s clients\u2019 portfolios \u2014 not just the NYC retirement system\u2019s \u2014 comply with his whims under threat of NYC yanking its funds.<\/p>\n

Dumb and dumber<\/p>\n

It\u2019s among the most narcissistically dumb ideas to ever come out of a public official. <\/p>\n

Let\u2019s get real: little Brad Lander ain\u2019t doing nothing to stop global warming; China keeps polluting and adding to carbon emissions every day. So does India and the rest of the \u00addeveloping world.<\/p>\n

Plus, those green stocks often really do really suck (Google \u201cSolyndra\u201d) while companies that invest in good old-fashioned crude like ExxonMobil \u2014 with a five-year spike in its shares of nearly 200% far outstripping the S&P \u2014 really don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

BlackRock\u2019s CEO, it should also be noted, is an odd target for Lander. <\/p>\n

Fink was one of the key proponents of so-called Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investing, which took into account carbon emissions of companies in which it invested.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCharlie Gasparino has his finger on the pulse of where business, politics and finance meet\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSign up to receive On The Money by Charlie Gasparino in your inbox every Thursday.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

He got a bad rap from the political right for it, and BlackRock lost business \u2014 that is until Fink clarified the company\u2019s position: As Fink told Lander years ago, the NYC comptroller can\u2019t dictate what BlackRock does for the Texas state pension.<\/p>\n

Plus, if BlackRock sold all of its $225 billion in energy-related stocks \u2014 the largest energy slug owned by any money manager \u2014 it would probably crash all major stock market indices.<\/p>\n

How is that good for NYC retirees? <\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t, of course.<\/p>\n

It shows how little thought Lander probably put into this attention-grabbing charade as he reportedly gears up to run for a seat representing lower Manhattan and progressive parts of Brooklyn in Congress in the 2026 midterms. <\/p>\n

It also shows why lefty Manhattan Borough President and former City Councilman Mark Levine<\/a>, who will replace Lander as comptroller, should just ignore his predecessor\u2019s recommendation.<\/p>\n

Levine probably won\u2019t, of course, given how progressively cringey NYC politics has become. <\/p>\n

I should point out that neither Lander nor Levine has the complete final say over where managers of the city\u2019s retirement system invest all that money. <\/p>\n

That say belongs to the trustees of the funds, of which the comptroller has one vote, while the mayor appoints members as well.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean Lander should be given a pass in the court of public opinion for making this an issue.<\/p>\n

Nor should he be given a pass when it comes to his legal obligations as city comptroller, i.e. maximizing returns in the retirement system, as opposed to tilting at windmills.<\/p>\n

A fully functioning government should take action before Lander or whoever replaces him does even more damage to a city that has been losing population and business for years.<\/p>\n

But our local prosecutors (Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg<\/a>, et al) are too busy jailing citizens defending themselves from criminals to make sure a raging leftist doesn\u2019t defund pension funds that are already underfunded \u2014 and bound to get worse as the city goes full-on socialist under our new mayor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brad Lander won\u2019t be New York City comptroller much longer \u2014 and that\u2019s good news for Gotham\u2019s rank…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":316013,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[140696,14464,100945,45,49,48,140697,133,84187,131,132,5148],"class_list":{"0":"post-316012","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-alvin-bragg","9":"tag-blackrock","10":"tag-brad-lander","11":"tag-business","12":"tag-ca","13":"tag-canada","14":"tag-exxonmobil","15":"tag-finance","16":"tag-larry-fink","17":"tag-personal-finance","18":"tag-personalfinance","19":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/316013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}