Listening to NPR on Tueday morning they were covering a conference hosted by Crain's on NYC's recovery. Since I was at work, I only heard it intermittently, but was NOT impressed. It sounded like a dozen varieties of trickle down, voo-doo economics. Two basic themes were being put forward repeatedly during the parts I heard, with absolutely no challenge from the NPR folks:

1. Banks are our saviors and so need even more tax money for bailouts;

and

2. Developers are our saviors and so need more tax money for sweetheart deals from the city;

2a. A corollary to the second theme was we need infrastructure money because that benefits developers. That's right. Infrastructure was being discussed as helping DEVELOPERS not the community.  read more »