Rattner Warns Mamdani Mayoralty Could Be Economically Risky

Steven Rattner, an MSNBC commentator and the chairman of investment firm Willet Partners, saw some worrying signals about a slowing economy and the challenges a Zohran Mamdani mayoralty will face during a wide-ranging address at The New York Historical Society.

One ominous sign: More than half of all consumer spending is driven by only the top 10 percent. Rattner manages the personal investments of, among other clients, billionaire and former mayor Michael Bloomberg, who endorsed Cuomo for mayor. According to reports, Bloomberg contributed $5 million last week to anti-Mamdani PACs.

Rattner in his talk did not address the political overtones head-on but stuck to more straightforward economic points underlying the US economy, noting that growth has slowed to 1.6 percent in the first half of the year, down from 2.4 percent in 2024. Inflation has ticked back up to 3 percent, and unemployment has edged up to 4.3 percent. Most strikingly, he emphasized the danger when consumer spending is driven by the top 10 percent of Americans, a concentration Rattner said leaves both the nation and New York City “over-dependent on a narrow base of affluence.”

That top-heavy imbalance, he warned, makes New York’s fiscal structure especially precarious. “A huge percentage of New York City’s tax revenue is paid by a very, very small number of people,” he told the audience, cautioning that aggressive tax-and-spend proposals risk driving those taxpayers away. With spending growth slowing to 1.5 percent and job creation confined largely to lower-wage service sectors, Rattner said that the city can ill afford policy experiments that could undermine tax revenue.

On what a Mamdani administration might mean for the city’s finances, Rattner was blunt. “When I see things like rent control . . . I understand the problem with housing,” he said. “But the solution . . . is not to regulate rents, which simply ensures that people don’t build apartments.” Construction incentives, not restrictions, he argued, are the only way to expand supply in a market where median rents have already climbed 6 percent in the past year.

Rattner tied those local pressures to national trends in capital markets. The stock market, he noted, is now trading at a price-to-earnings ratio second only to that of the dot-com bubble, a sign that Wall Street valuations—and by extension the city’s tax receipts—are on increasingly frothy ground. At the same time, 31 percent of US economic growth this year has come from AI investment, a figure he described as “extraordinary, but not necessarily sustainable.” Because so much of that investment benefits technology firms and wealthy investors clustered in New York’s upper tax brackets, he said, “our prosperity is being built on sectors that can turn south very quickly.”

Rattner added that a $100-billion city budget and 300,000-person workforce require tested management, not ideological experimentation. While calling capitalism “wildly imperfect,” he insisted it remains “the only system that has done so much for so many people economically.”

For voters weighing Mamdani’s calls for expanded social programs and tighter rent control, Rattner’s charts offered a sobering frame: Slowng growth, speculative markets, and concentrated wealth leave little room for fiscal error. His message to New York was clear—in an era when 31 percent of growth rides on AI bets, and a handful of taxpayers fund the bulk of city services, managerial competence matters more than rhetoric in determining whether the city thrives or falters.

Eric Schwartzman is a journalist, author, and freelance marketing consultant in New York City.