The Assassination of New York - Softcover
Robert Fitch's The Assassination of New York unearthed Gotham's great secret: how its multinational banks and landowning families, led by the Rockefellers, scuttled the City's matchless port and planned the destruction of its once rich manufacturing base.
In this fascinating new edition, Fitch shows how Giuliani provided a record transfer of wealth from welfare poor to real estate rich. His most lasting legacy turns out to be the accumulation of the greatest debt in urban history, turning New York into the Enron of cities. The city and the state now owe more than Argentina. Schools earmarked for money remain dilapidated. Billions disappeared into organized crime- dominated precincts.
Fitch updates his classic story of how the capitol of free enterprise was built by state planning and maintained by city subsidies. He adds an insider's account of the Second Battle of Lower Manhattan now unfolding between the city's uptown and downtown real estate titans.
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About the Author:
Robert Fitch teaches Political Science at Long Island University. He is a former union organizer and a consultant to New York City trade unions. His books include Who Rules the Corporations and Ghana: End of an Illusion, both with Mary Oppenheimer.
From Publishers Weekly:
The assassins of New York City, Fitch argues, were a group of powerful elites tied to the FIRE (financial, insurance and real estate) industries who began to influence city planning as far back as the Depression and still hold some power. According to the author, the goal of these people (whose ranks include the Rockefeller family) was to de-industrialize NYC so that their real estate holdings could be put to more profitable uses than manufacturing, namely the construction of large office buildings and luxury housing. Fitch ( Who Rules the Corporation ) provides a raft of statistics to document how the de-industrialization policy, which included the strangulation of the city's port, resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of blue-collar jobs, just as the elites had intended. However, the second phase of their plan--the creation of hundreds of thousands of white-collar jobs--never materialized, resulting in a city with a high unemployment rate and inadequate public services. Fitch details so many ill-conceived, FIRE-inspired master plans for New York City that the material becomes confusing and repetitious. In his zeal to document how the FIRE elites systematically murdered NYC, Fitch's book is more a treatise than a whodunit. Students of urban politics and planning will consider his information crucial, but more casual readers will find their minds wandering. Nonetheless, Fitch gives the average NYC resident plenty to get angry about, but holds out hope for the future by suggesting that a return to economic diversity could lead to a resurrected Gotham.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherVerso Books
- Publication date2005
- ISBN 10 1859844014
- ISBN 13 9781859844014
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages320
- Rating
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