(Photo: Patrick McMullan)

Faced with the state’s crippling budget woes, Governor Paterson thinks the Feds should write a check. “Somehow I think New York is as important as AIG, Merrill Lynch, and Bear Stearns,” he said at the Children’s Rights Benefit on October 14. “Lehman Brothers must have declared themselves to be a state, because nobody cared what happened to them. New York gets back $82.2 billion less from the federal government than we pay in taxes. We’re always expected to bail out America, and now it’s time for America to recognize the value of New York.” Is New York in danger of losing its position as the world’s financial capital? “President Roosevelt moved the Federal Reserve from New York to Washington in 1933, and people worried that New York would no longer be the international banking hub,” he said. “But it didn’t change that at all, and I don’t think nationalizing the banks will change it either.”

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• Archive: “Intelligencer”
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