Ilya Marritz

Grim news today: the US jobless rate tops 9.5 %.

In our own region, the drop in employment has generally been a little milder than in the nation as a whole. This map from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' NYC office shows only the Jersey Shore can match the ...

New York, NY —

Why the price of crustaceans has plummeted. Guest: Trevor Corson, author of The Secret Life of Lobsters.

New York, NY —

An inside view of federally-sponsored student aid. Guest: Russell Osgood, President of Grinnell College.

New York, NY —

The Supreme Court ends the OCC’s exclusive oversight of national banks. Guest: Sarah Ludwig, co-director of the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project

New York, NY —

Mayor Bloomberg will sign a bill into law today that should bring in a lot of additional tax revenue for the city. The measure affects the booking of hotel rooms over the internet. The bill requires travel sites to always pay taxes on the full ...

New York, NY —

Museums consider selling parts of their permanent collections, some in Albany want to put an end to it. Guest: Robin Pogrebin of The New York Times.

New York, NY —

An internal report by the city's Buildings Department found inspectors are poorly trained, and their inspection procedures vary from person to person. On his weekly radio show this morning on WOR, the mayor responded to the findings.

BLOOMBERG: We have to take a look and see ...

The MTA clinches its first ever station-naming deal. Barclays Bank will get its name on the Atlantic Avenue station in Brooklyn for $4 million over 20 years. And Forest City Ratner - which collected $400 million from Barclays in ...

New York, NY —

The MTA collects $4 million on its first station-naming rights deal. Guest: WNYC’s Ilya Marritz

You could waste a lot of time tracing history's tragedies and ironies with News from 1930, a brilliant website that offers news items from the last time the economy was in tailspin. Here's just a little of what was happening 79 years ago on June 24:

Senator Glass is ...

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Private equity and the New York State retirement fund scandal. Guest: Peter G. Peterson, co-founder, the Blackstone Group.

New York, NY —

Rents may be falling for unregulated apartments, but they're going up on a million rent-regulated apartments in New York City. The Rent Guidelines Board approved a three-percent increase on one-year leases, and a six-percent increase on two-year leases.

Landlord Arnold Fine who attended last night's board ...

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How economic concerns are driving the protests in Iran. Guest: Laura Secor, contributor to The New Yorker.

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Why the Ford and Robert Wood Johnson Foundations are offering buyouts to huge numbers of staff. Guest: Ian Wilhelm, The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

New York, NY —

As the stalemate drags on in Albany a key change to the city tax code hangs in the balance. Groups representing self-employed workers convinced the Mayor, the City Council, and the State Assembly to repeal or reduce the Unincorporated Business Tax for 17,000 freelancers.

Now they're ...

Since last year, the ten states in the Northeast Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative have made power plants bid for the right to pollute. This initiative is considered a model for a national cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gases, currently under consideration in Congress.

Unfortunately, the results of this week's auction ...

Startling numbers: unemployment in NYC jumped a full percentage point, to nine percent in May. This after a couple months of mostly flat jobless numbers. The State Department of Labor also points out that more than half of the 400,000 jobs gained in the state between 2003 and 2008 have now vanished.

The Business Council of New York circulated an email in response, urging Albany lawmakers to reject a number of mostly Democratic bills they say will kill jobs, including "prevailing wage" measures and paid family leave. Of course, the continuing Senate deadlock is almost as good as a "no" vote.

Albany lawmakers are frequently criticized for passing most bills right at the end of session, so there's not much opportunity for debate. But right now, that way of doing things doesn't seem so sucky.

Bills passed so far this week: Assembly 317, Senate 0

New York, NY —

Once again, the city’s three library systems - The Brooklyn Public Library, the Queens Public Library, and the New York Public Library - have escaped the budget knife. WNYC’s Ilya Marritz watched the deal take shape. He reports there’s one potential money-saver the mayor and ...

New York, NY —

Planet Money explains why small banks don’t like Obama’s proposals for regulation, and why big banks are OK with it.