All American cities are facing budget shortfalls because of the recession, but Wall Street's meltdown has decimated New York City's tax base, Michael Bloomberg said yesterday in announcing plans to slash 20,000 city jobs, cut services and raise taxes. The aim is to reduce an expected $4 billion deficit, reports the New York Post.
"We had prepared for a downturn," Bloomberg said, "but I think it's safe to say nobody prepared for the severity of the downturn that we have been experiencing." The mayor predicted that New York would lose around 300,000 jobs through 2010—47,000 of them on Wall Street alone—and that the picture would get even bleaker if the state and federal government failed to help.
(More Michael Bloomberg stories.)