{"id":305777,"date":"2026-07-26T02:11:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T02:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/305777\/"},"modified":"2026-07-26T02:11:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-26T02:11:08","slug":"mamdanis-municipal-bond-mess-will-only-get-worse-as-mayor-prioritizes-anti-israel-policies-over-nycs-fiscal-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/305777\/","title":{"rendered":"Mamdani’s municipal bond mess will only get worse as mayor prioritizes anti-Israel policies over NYC’s fiscal health"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York City is in\u00a0pretty\u00a0great shape financially. \u00adRecent drops in the price of its bonds <\/a>aren\u2019t because of worries about Mayor Mamdani\u2019s socialist fiscal policies. Instead, it\u2019s because of some stuff happening in DC that\u2019s rattling the entire bond market.<\/p>\n

That, at least, is the far-fetched spin coming from New York City Comptroller Mark Levine, the city\u2019s independently elected chief fiscal officer. He was responding to questions I had last week about the recent uptick in so-called yields \u2014 interest rates on the Big Apple\u2019s municipal debt.<\/a><\/p>\n

For bond-market novices, yields and prices go in opposite directions even as they signal the same thing: the value of lending money to the city. Yields spike when prices decline because investors demand more compensation for taking the risk of holding a bond until maturity when the loan is repaid (typically in 10 years).<\/p>\n

That\u2019s exactly what has been happening as Mamdani doubles down on his Marxist Third-Worldism, every minute of every day, it seems. Yields on the 10-year municipal bond spiked for the week ending July 17, to 3.46% from 3.34%, after a jump the week before.<\/p>\n

These weren\u2019t isolated examples. Look at a chart of city bond prices since Mamdani took office and, in addition to precipitous drop between January and this month, you see a premium being demanded by investors in the form of higher yields. That trend mellowed out for a time, after he \u201cbalanced\u201d his first budget (with various gimmicks, of course), but more recently prices have resumed their descent.<\/p>\n

Yes, Levine correctly points out that many factors cause\u00a0city\u00a0bond prices to seesaw.\u00a0Bonds in general\u00a0have been falling across the board because of the high price of oil <\/a>and inflation fears rooted in policies coming out of Washington.<\/p>\n

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

\u201cThe recent movement in the city\u2019s bond yields does not indicate an eroding tax base, which is at record levels, or the expectation of a rating downgrade,\u201d comptroller rep Shaquana DeVissiere tells me.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the same period, the 10-year municipal benchmark rose a comparable amount, suggesting that the change reflects broader market conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n

DeVissiere also claims \u201cthe city\u2019s credit remains strong.\u201d<\/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

Triple tax-free<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll come back to these statements in a moment, but recall that muni bonds have unique characteristics in that they are triple tax-free. You don\u2019t pay federal, state or local taxes if you\u2019re a city resident and hold them. That makes NYC munis a great tax shelter when you have a mayor who wants to soak the rich \u2014 as Mamdani is doing now.<\/p>\n

In other words, prices should be more stable, Wall Street financial advisers tell me \u2014 unless, of course, you worry that the guy in charge wants to blow the place up.<\/p>\n

Mamdani is not merely content to spend record amounts of money (see his\u00a0$125.8\u00a0billion budget<\/a>) on boondoggles like government-run grocery stores. He also wants to milk already overtaxed wealth \u00adcreators more \u2014 even as they continue to flee to Florida.<\/p>\n

Our credit \u201cremains strong\u201d for now, Mr. Comptroller, but the tax base is \u201ceroding\u201d as every statistic shows people who can afford to leave are, in fact, leaving in droves.<\/a>\u00a0Meanwhile, people who monitor our \u201ccredit\u201d at the Wall Street rating agencies are in fact warning it\u2019s not so strong.<\/p>\n

Mamdani also has an odd way of governing a diverse city that\u2019s home to the largest Jewish population outside of Israel. On top of his refusal to oppose \u201cglobalizing the intifada,\u201d he wants Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrested for war crimes<\/a>. When the mayor learns that can\u2019t be done, he calls for protests if and when the PM visits the city.<\/p>\n

Then he seems surprised that anti\u00adsemitic hate crimes are up, including a couple of apparently hate-inspired stabbings on the Upper West Side<\/a> just after he calls for protests.<\/p>\n

Not exactly reassuring for bond investors. I say this as someone who has covered this market for decades. It\u2019s not just bond ratings and budgets that move muni-bond prices; confidence in the mayor, or lack thereof, matters as well.<\/p>\n

I remember when David Dinkins was elected mayor and the city\u2019s bonds began to fall. Like our current mayor, Dinkins came to office with a pretty weak r\u00e9sum\u00e9 (city clerk, Manhattan borough president), which in hindsight looks positively Churchillian compared to Mamdani\u2019s (an assemblyman and rapper).<\/p>\n

Still, as Dinkins started governing in 1990, bond prices started to fall, pretty dramatically for a while until he got his act together. It wasn\u2019t just because of falling tax revenues and Wall Street cutbacks following the 1987 market crash, and of course his own progressive spending plans.<\/p>\n

The real problem was when it was revealed that, amid the worst budget crisis since the 1970s,\u00a0Dinkins did something foolish and spent $11,500 \u2014 much of that from public funds \u2014 on a fancy headboard in his Gracie Mansion bedroom.<\/p>\n

Yes, muni-bond prices did fall on that news. That\u2019s why it\u2019s also a good bet that munis are now falling partly because we have a mayor who seems\u00a0less interested in arresting their decline than in arresting the Israeli prime minister.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York City is in\u00a0pretty\u00a0great shape financially. \u00adRecent drops in the price of its bonds aren\u2019t because of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":305778,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[3895,18800,288,10447,9,56,63,65,64,299,82],"class_list":["post-305777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-bonds","tag-business","tag-comptroller","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-opinion","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}