'Meet the Press' transcript for Sept. 21, 2008

MR. BROKAW:  I moved to New York in the 1970s.  The city was on its backside at that time.  Real estate prices were depressed--not just suppressed, but depressed.  Central Park was a mess, the infrastructure was in desperate need of a lot of work.  Are you going to go crashing back into the 1970s in New York as a result of what's happening on Wall Street?

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  No, we're not going to make the mistake--the mistake that was made in the '70s is we stopped policing the streets, we stopped cleaning the streets, we stopped cleaning the graffiti off buildings, we stopped supporting our cultural institutions and building parks and schools and all those kinds of things.  We are going to go ahead and continue those things. We may have to stretch out some construction projects, we may have to ask people to do more with less.  We may not be able to have the frills at the edge, but we are not going to walk away from our city.  That's the prescription for disaster.  When you do that, your tax base leaves, and the rest of this country, as well as New York, are going to have exactly the same decisions to make.  The taxpayers are going to have to decide do they want to have a future or not?  If they don't want to have a future, then they're not going to have to pay as much now, but if they want to leave a better world for their kids, they're going to have to pay the bills up front.

MR. BROKAW:  We do know that you're exploring the possibility of getting a third term.  The rules would have to be changed.  You're term limited out at the end of two terms.  There is some exploration going on.  Would you like to serve a third term under these circumstances?

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  Well, I have 466 days left to go in my job, and I was sort of thinking, maybe, to be host of this program.  That would be a nice job for me.  Probably pays a little bit better than the dollar a year I get now.

MR. BROKAW:  It--your net worth, however, puts the rest of us to shame, so I'm not...

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  Well, that--be that as it may, it's all going to charity. You know, I think one of the things we have to focus on here, Tom, all kidding aside, is that there is a partisanship that has paralyzed our country.  Both parties have redistricted themselves such that they don't have to worry about a challenge across the aisle, but they have to have--they worry about a challenge from their flanks, so the conservatives are less willing to move to the middle, and the liberals are less willing to move to the middle, and we've got to get over that, and we've got to understand that we're all in this together.  Unless we have bipartisan legislation and bipartisan governing at the federal, state, and city level, we're just going to have one problem after another, and the future's not as bright as I think it should be for America.

MR. BROKAW:  We want to share with our audience what you had to say about society in general, not just Wall Street.  This comes from the Daily News. "`An "I want it now" society that refuses to live within its means, that's partly responsible for the subprime-mortgage crisis,' Mayor Bloomberg said.

"`I think you can't blame just the banks,' he said, taking borrowers to task.

"`They say, "I want the great American dream, I want it now, and I'm not going to wait until I put some money in the bank." That's where we lost the moral compass of saying no to people who did not have the earning capacity to support a mortgage.'" Most people believe that you have, for a public figure, as strong a take on what this country needs to do as anyone in public office right now.  So why not follow Warren Buffett's recommendation, come to Wall Street, come to Washington, and say, "I'm here to serve this country, I'd like to take over the agency and try to manage our way out of all this."

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  Well, number one, I'd do anything that the country asked me to do, but I do have a job in New York.  I've committed myself to the voters and the taxpayers and the citizens of New York to do the best job I can, and we're going to go through some very tough times.  We've been prudent, we've cut back, we've saved money, but this will hurt us.  It'll hurt every city and small town, big town, big cities in this country.  It's hurting us around the world, and I think that there are other people who have plenty of qualifications, but I do have a job already.  If the government asked me to help, I'd be happy to give my advice, and I've tried to stay in contact with both the presidential candidates, talked to both of them every couple of weeks, and give them my views.  They should just not take them as gospel, but add them into the mix, and they should get advice from a lot of people.  There are a lot of smart people out there.

MR. BROKAW:  In the spirit of what the country needs to face up to, and in the candid spirit of Mike Bloomberg, going beyond the borders of New York City, is this country in for a no-growth year, very likely a recession, as a result of what we're going through?

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  Well, I would describe the country as resilient, and I think that we have a better hand to play than anybody else.  We are not immune to problems or to problems overseas, and we've got to understand that.  But if you take a look at all of the great strengths of America: entrepreneurialship, work ethic, natural resources, a democracy, a transparency, a willingness to be critical.  You know, around the world, they look at us, and they say, "Why are you criticizing yourself?  Why are you people arguing during the political process to elect a president or somebody else?" That's the great strength of this country.  So, long term, I think we're in good shape.  Short term, we are going to have problems like everybody else, and I think the general economic consensus is that this will be a year of no growth or perhaps worse.  We're projecting tax revenues in New York City to fall, the economically sensitive taxes, by 12 percent in this fiscal year, and I think that's not being too conservative.  I hope it's not being too expansive and too optimistic.  I am--I think, I think everybody should be doing this in all parts of government--I'm planning for the worst and hoping for the best.

MR. BROKAW:  Is Wall Street going to have to be completely restructured in terms of the regulations that govern it?

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  I'm planning for the worst and hoping for the best.

MR. BROKAW:  Is Wall Street going to have to be completely restructured in terms of the regulations that govern it?

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  Paulson has always talked about reforming regulation.  I think the first thing we need is more disclosure visibility.  The problem is that nobody knows what any institution owns and what the terms of the securities they own are and what they're worth.  If that was out in the public domain, then there wouldn't be this crisis of confidence.  You could say "This company's worth less," "This company's worth more," "I don't like what they own," "I do like what they own." But right now nobody knows what they own.  In fact, the managements of a lot of these companies, I'm convinced, never knew what their traders were buying and what the risks were.  And they, every day, wake up not having any idea what's going to happen to them.  When things were going up, it was great, nobody paid attention.  We were all comfortable with letting that situation continue.  Now, all of a sudden, things are going down for a variety of reasons.  It started with maybe the increase in oil.  It started with overbuilding in the real estate residential part of the market. It started with just the end of a cycle.  Nothing goes up for ever.  And then all of a sudden we've said, you know, "What's happening here?" So if you started with disclosure, then you could really approach the regulation issue. We need more regulation.

But I think--let me get back to this bipartisan or partisan thing.  What the Democrats have to understand is that while we do need to reform our regulation and we do need more restrictions, it is true that it is capitalism and free enterprise and companies that create jobs and wealth for every American.  And what the Republicans have to understand is, while it may be capitalism and free enterprise and companies that create jobs, we have to have regulations that are realistic and they have to be followed.  And I think if both parties could learn that and come together then there really isn't that much difference between them, and they can go and take this country to the next level.

MR. BROKAW:  But shouldn't there be an urgency about that and a parallel track to this bailout?

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  Absolutely.  Absolutely.  But I think one is literally measured in weeks and the executive branch of government has to be the solution, and that's the lack of confidence in our financial markets and in the institutions that make up those markets.  The other is the longer-term focusing on the problems that, in the end, got us here.  We, we spend money we don't have.  We have trillion dollar deficits.  We have a birth rate that's too low to support Social Security.  We have a health care system that's going to bankrupt us.  We're going to spend 25 percent of our GNP on health care, and we get worse health care than they do in western Europe and they spend less money.  Our public education system throughout this country--we worked hard on it in New York--but we all have--and other cities are doing it, too--but we have a long ways to go.

We have an energy policy--we're transferring our wealth to overseas to a bunch of countries that don't have the same values as us.  In some cases, they're using our money to finance terrorism against us.  We've got to sit down--infrastructure as well.  There's a whole list of things.  Immigration. We don't have an intelligent policy.  Those are the things we've got to do. But that has got to be done in Congress.  It needs leadership from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, from the White House, but it needs bipartisan cooperation no matter how this next election turns out.

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