“I think about this a lot,” is the lowest form of online punditry, but this is a freemium newsletter, so:
I think about this 2012 New Yorker piece by current Canadian Finance Minister and then-Reuters digital editor (and my boss) Chrystia Freeland a lot.
Freeland untangles why America’s billionaires were so consumed with disgust for then-President Barack Obama, despite the fact that their wealth grew significantly during his first term.
The answer, effectively, is that the post-financial crisis economy had given billionaires such vast riches that the only thing left for them to want was the personal esteem of the commander-in-chief. And Obama, who took office during the worst financial crisis since the Depression and was running against a man who made a fortune in private equity, denied them that, making pointed attacks on speculative financiers a centerpiece of his successful re-election campaign.
Hedge fund billionaire Leon Cooperman is the story’s main protagonist and the whole piece is suffused with his abject need for a congenial “attaboy” from Obama.
All of which brings us to Alvin Bragg, the new Manhattan District Attorney.
Bragg a Democrat, was elected on a criminal justice reform platform, beating out Wall Street’s favored candidate, Tali Farhadian Weinstein.
Bragg sent a memo to his staff instructing them to use their prosecutorial discretion to drop some kinds of misdemeanor cases, not hold most defendants on bail, avoid seeking after jail time for many crimes and downgrade some felony charges to misdemeanors.
In response, Republicans and the New York Post called him soft on crime.
And the city’s business elite, represented by the powerful Partnership for New York City, accused Bragg of imperiling the return of workers to Manhattan office buildings. The Post reported that PFNYC members like Blackstone’s Steven Schwarzman “grilled” Bragg on a conference call.
But, and here’s the interesting part, those business executives reportedly came away from the meeting reassured!
So, surely Bragg changed his policies, right?
No, not a single one.
Bragg, the Post reported, explained his office’s policies, and said that, yes, he would continue to prosecute violent felonies, attacks on police officers and gun possession. He assured call participants that he was concerned about public safety, but that he would also pursue his campaign promises related to social justice. And, a Post source said, Bragg wants to hold these type of calls with business leaders frequently.
And that, apparently, was enough to placate the business leaders on the call. He might not have changed any of the policies that had the PFNYC crowd up in arms, but he did something more important: he genuflected to them personally, showed that he respected their input and would seek it out in the future.
New York’s business machers have gargantuan egos and for these billionaires, personal deference can easily trump policy preferences, at least for a while.
Oh, and also never underestimate the extent to which aggrieved members of “the business community” simply have no idea what they are talking about.
One caller threw what he clearly thought was a gotcha question at Bragg, asking if he would prosecute someone who hit him in the head with a baseball bat. Yes, Bragg reportedly said, because that’s a violent felony. (Bragg’s memo never mentioned not prosecuting such crimes.) Other callers said that Bragg’s memo had made New York City unsafe, a rather remarkable achievement for a DA three weeks in to his term.
If Bragg really wanted to turbo-charge this strategy of symbolic fealty to monied elites, he doesn’t have to look further for an example than City Hall, where Eric Adams is talking up cryptocurrencies (over which a mayor has zero control) and urging workers to get back to the office.
So far, it’s working. Adams is very much persona grata in the same elite circles who hated Bill de Blasio, even though de Blasio all-but endorsed Adams in the primary and endorsed him in the general and Adams’ is continuing every meaningful policy of the de Blasio administration. The exception is policing, where Adams is re-starting an anti-gun undercover unit and calling for some state-level criminal justice reforms to be repealed.
But even that latter policy is pandering, of a sort. The Democratic super-majority in the statehouse is unlikely to go along, but hey, Adams just might make Leon Cooperman feel a bit better.
And maybe Bragg should put in a call to noted crypto-bull, criminal justice reform advocate and Wall Street legend Mike Novogratz.