Today is full of bad news for Wall Street. The New York Times reports that the street is moving mid-paying jobs to middle America, and S&P has a new report out saying that the i-banking business is moving to a “less profitable, but somewhat lower risk, business model.”

The S&P analysts expect a decline of up to 10 percent in revenues this year relative to last year. They say, too, that new regulations aren’t banking’s biggest problem. The industry’s biggest problem, rather, is that the economy is weak, and even if it recovers, it won’t need as much of what Wall Street is selling: debt.

The best recent indication of Wall Street’s listlessness, though, is not in the financial press but in the Times’s metro section. (more…)

New York is at the top of the debt list in the latest U.S. Census data on state and local government finances.

As of 2009, New York’s state and local long-term indebtedness came to $15,202 per-capita, more than any state and 74 percent above the national average. In 2008, New York’s per-capita state and local debt load was $13,804 and ranked third, trailing only Alaska and Massachusetts.

Comparatively speaking, state and local debt in New York wasn’t much lighter when measured as a share of income, coming to $326 per $1,000 — 45 percent above average and narrowly trailing only Alaska. In the debt per $1,000 category, the Empire State’s #3 ranking was unchanged.

Tables based on the newly released 2009 Census data on state and local government finances have been updated at the Empire Center’s Data Bank.

Governor Paterson’s proposed budget deficit reduction plan includes a $300 million raid on the coffers of the Battery Park City Authority (BPCA), which would be required to issue new bonds and send the proceeds to Albany.   But BPCA board member Charles Urstadt and former authority spokesman Avrum Hyman have a better idea, which they describe on the op-ed page of today’s New York Times:

As two of the officials who helped carry out Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller’s 1967 mandate to build a Lower Manhattan community on landfill in the Hudson River, and considering the unquestionable success of what he proposed evident in today’s vibrant Battery Park City, we believe that New York City, which has a little-remembered option to buy the entire property for $1, should hand over that dollar bill. Let’s finally make Battery Park City, with its 10,000 or so residents and 92 acres of businesses, housing and beautifully maintained green spaces, a part of the city to which it really belongs.

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