Thread by @matthewstoller

1. Today I wrote about the recent blackouts in New York City, the greatest city in America. Monopolization and financialization have put NYC on the brink of disaster. And it's not just electricity. mattstoller.substack.com/welcome

2. Blackouts are scary things. On July 13th, people got stuck in elevators, the subway stopped, theaters shut down, and Jennifer Lopez was interrupted in the middle of a song at Madison Square Garden. nytimes.com/2019/07/15/nyr…

3. Another blackout happened a week later. Just before the blackout, NYC electric utility Con Ed president Tim Cawley embarrassingly said, “By any measure, we are the most reliable electric delivery system in the United States." Oops.
mattstoller.substack.com/welcome

4. Blackouts in New York City reflect the politics of the time. In 1965, and then again in 1969, Con Edison had massive outages that inspired frustration with what Americans perceived as an overall breakdown of the New Deal order. Another one in 1977 enabled widespread looting.

5. The Carter and then Reagan eras of deregulation and concentrated capital were in many ways framed against the old, over-regulated, and antiquated systems represented by Con Edison, and in a bigger sense, New York City of the 1970s. mattstoller.substack.com/welcome

6. Deregulation finally hit New York's utilities fully in 1997. But it didn't work. Con Ed still raises dividends every year, its CEO makes $10M a year, and its operations are terrible. Consider what happened after Hurricane Sandy.

7. Half the city went without power, and not because of the storm. Because of the poor electrical grid. The Utility Workers of America released a report on it. Con Ed was so badly run it didn't bother to stock up on ladders before the storm. Ladders! assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4402…

8. But the weak electrical grid is only the first problem in NYC. The second is the Hudson tunnel, the busiest rail link in America. It was built in 1910, and is so old and rundown it could collapse at any moment. mattstoller.substack.com/welcome

9. Chris Christie, to fight Obama, refused to use stimulus money to rebuild the Hudson tunnel. But even if he hadn't been a jerk, we increasingly can't build things in America without spending far more than it should cost. Why? These guys.

10. Increasingly, government contractor is a wretched stew of corruption, due to 'reinventing government' by Bill Clinton and Al Gore, super-sized by Dick Cheney. One consultant, for instance, from BCG, now costs the gov't $33k a week.

11. The resulting system of private governance is both inefficient and expensive. Instead of hiring a gov't employee at $120k/year gov'ts now hire a Booz Allen consultant at $500k/year. If socialists want to socialize something, they should start with, oh, government.

12. The third problem, after electricity and transport, is food. New York City nearly ran out of food after Sandy, because of corporate concentration. Here's @sidhubaba from 2013. citylab.com/equity/2013/10…

@sidhubaba 13. New York state used to grow a lot of the food NYC ate. Even Brooklyn and Queens counties were large vegetable producers! But that system is gone, as large companies like Sysco now run a much leaner and distanced system. NYC's food supply is just farther away.

@sidhubaba 14. We have pooled risk in hidden ways. At Boeing it means the company was generating gobs of cash, but planes started crashing. In NYC that means residents are vulnerable to losing electricity and food, and to transit collapses. mattstoller.substack.com/welcome

@sidhubaba 15. Governor Andrew Cuomo is part of the problem. His defining experience, in my view, was his alleged attempt in 1988 to take over a south Florida savings and loan bank and drain the bank of its assets. He's a finance guy first and foremost. sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xpm-19…

@sidhubaba 16. Cuomo can't see the problems of corruption and financialization because his political success relies on them. He believes in corrupt contracting and corporate concentration. The regulators he appoints often see the world that way too. mattstoller.substack.com/welcome

@sidhubaba 17. There’s a political rebellion going on all over American society because it’s obvious our leaders can’t handle the job we’ve given to them. I just hope the rebellion succeeds before a crisis really shows us why that rebellion needs to succeed. mattstoller.substack.com/welcome

@sidhubaba 18. Anyway, that's my NYC disaster movie. Right now it's just spreadsheets and the theme to Jaws. All fixable, of course, if we choose to fix it.

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