00:00What is your main concern, and is there a way that you can avoid, I guess, whatever this potential corporate
00:07governance issue is?
00:08Look, we own SpaceX now in the private markets, and once it goes public and enters the S&P, which
00:13it appears will be expedited to do,
00:16through indexing, we're going to own a large amount of stock in the public company.
00:21And I'm okay with founders who want to exert control, I get that.
00:24But what Elon Musk is doing here is taking it to a whole new level.
00:28This level of control, dominating shareholder power, no independent board, occupying both the CEO and chairman's role at the same
00:36time,
00:37really eviscerating shareholder rights to sue and take other actions.
00:40And I represent shareholders.
00:42We have a $325 billion pension fund.
00:45We probably have $80 billion plus in indexing.
00:48So we're going to be a major shareholder in SpaceX.
00:51And I think that efficient capital markets require democratic governance and transparency,
00:58and it appears we're not going to get that out of SpaceX.
01:00The letter that you sent, it also included the heads of a couple of other pension plans.
01:04And I do wonder, is there any sort of regulatory or legislative change that could be made to address?
01:12And this has been a growing problem for a while.
01:13We had a lot of the same concerns with Tesla, and it's not just Elon Musk.
01:16There have been other sort of tech companies out there where the founders have had outsized voting power and power
01:22over their boards
01:23in a way that basically meant that if you were a shareholder, certainly a passive shareholder, you basically had to
01:28take whatever they gave you.
01:29Yeah, this is a trend in Silicon Valley.
01:31Of course, we'll see it with Meta, et cetera, and Google to some extent.
01:34But this is going way beyond what we've seen in those companies.
01:37And so, yes, I've joined with the state of New York comptroller and the head of the largest pension fund
01:41in California.
01:42We have a trillion dollars in assets combined, and so we're making our voices heard.
01:46We are presumably all going to be major shareholders after the IPO, and we're going to continue to be active.
01:52As for regulatory help, it does not seem that that's coming certainly during the Trump administration.
01:57So I think it's on us as major shareholders to speak up for our employees and retirees,
02:02and also millions of shareholders around the company who also are going to have money in index funds,
02:08retirees in the private sector, and they deserve democratic corporate governance as well.
02:12I do want to ask you just about kind of the overall trends right now that we're seeing right now
02:17with artificial intelligence.
02:18I mean, by almost every objective measure, this does seem to be like one of these big transformational moments in
02:23our economy, in our society.
02:26There's going to be good with that, but there's also going to be bad.
02:28And I do wonder, as to particularly in your role, how you find the balance.
02:33Look, this is very much a New York story.
02:35I think more than people realize, our economy is tied up in New York City with the financing of AI,
02:41so we've gotten a huge upside from that in the last few years.
02:44We are financing the data center boom, among other things.
02:48Also, this is the capital of white-collar work.
02:51We have a million people who come to office buildings every morning in Manhattan, careers that are very exposed to
02:57AI.
02:58So depending on where this goes, we could get an enormous economic boost, or we could pay a real price.
03:04And my office actually issued a report today where we looked at five scenarios ranging from very good to very
03:09bad,
03:10whether we have an AI bubble burst, whether we have an actual supercharge and productivity that benefits the city more
03:17broadly, whether we lose jobs.
03:20We're not even having this discussion right now in local government.
03:23We're not doing anything to prepare.
03:25Yeah.
03:25And we're headed into unknown territory.
03:27What's the potential scenario?
03:28I mean, when we talk about white-collar, and let's just take finance, because, I mean, there's been a lot
03:32of talk,
03:32particularly with a certain research job, certain types of investment banking jobs,
03:35the idea that you could maybe potentially replace some of those human beings with whatever the AI tools are.
03:42Maybe that's not right now today, but most people think that will be very close in the future.
03:47I think we might already be seeing it, and we have some data in New York that is very interesting.
03:52For the first time ever, the unemployment rate among young people in their 20s in New York City
03:57is higher for those who have a college degree than those who do not.
04:01We've never seen that in the data going back decades.
04:05That, to me, can only be explained by the fact that companies that have white-collar workers are slowing down,
04:12bringing on entry-level talent.
04:14This is an early sign of what could be accelerating.
04:17By the way, talk to any person in their 20s in New York City.
04:20Breaking into the job market is brutal right now, and I think this is partly what's driving that.
04:25I expect it to be accelerated.
04:27What are the most exposed sectors?
04:28It's finance.
04:29It's accounting.
04:31It's business services.
04:32It's media.
04:34Those are the pillars of New York City's economy.
04:36So we here need to have a plan to deal with this if we take a hit to our budget,
04:40if we have a lot of unemployed people.
04:42And the plan I put out today calls for us to start to build up a reserve fund
04:46so that we can handle that uncertainty when it hits.
04:48With regards to that reserve fund, are we talking about something that would be temporary in nature,
04:54or are you talking kind of long-term, almost endowment-like, if you will,
04:57to sort of supplement what gets left?
04:59Yeah, it's almost like a sovereign wealth fund for New York City.
05:02We have a mechanism.
05:03We have a rainy day fund.
05:04It's very tiny.
05:06It's only about 2% or 3% of our total tax revenue.
05:09It's not going to be enough to get us through the kind of turbulence that I'm talking about.
05:13Is the mayor on board with this?
05:15I hope so.
05:17We're pushing hard.
05:18It's not easy because we need to get the money.
05:20I'm going to be fighting for this.
05:21Our budget's due in June.
05:22This is going to be a major theme for me between now and then and beyond.
05:26Well, when we talk about sort of preparing New York City for what the future might be,
05:32how real do you think this threat is compared to the multitude of threats?
05:36I mean, it seems like every two years somebody says, you know, New York City is over.
05:40All the people on Wall Street are moving to Florida.
05:42You had the COVID pandemic.
05:43You had this, that, and the other here.
05:46Why should I take this more seriously than all those other threats, which we now know,
05:50at least long term, did not sort of end up being the bust that we've done.
05:54You're making a really good point to your viewers who are not in New York City who think this is
05:57a
05:57hellhole right now.
05:58New York City's booming by almost any measure.
06:01Commercial real estate leasing is on a tear.
06:04The best it's been in 20 years.
06:07We had 65 million tourists here last year.
06:09You can barely walk in Times Square right now.
06:11Crime is dropping here in many, many ways.
06:14Demand for luxury housing, for all housing, is off the charts.
06:16Rents, off the charts.
06:18As of today, May 21st, 2026, we're doing well.
06:23We've overcome the naysayers again and again.
06:26But I think that AI needs to be seen as unprecedented.
06:30And yeah, we did great in the internet boom.
06:33New York City has thrived since the internet boom.
06:35But I don't know.
06:37We don't know.
06:38We could see another boom built on this.
06:41If we are the capital of AI, applied AI, we continue to finance this.
06:45But we have to be ready for the downside.
06:48We're not.
06:49And I put out my report today to sound the alarm.
06:51Do you have confidence, if I brought you back a year from now, that we'll be prepared?
06:57We are very far behind right now.
07:00This is not a major topic, even of discussion in local government.
07:05Maybe we're hoping on the federal government to save us, but I'm not optimistic about that.
07:09Cities need to start taking charge because cities are on the front lines of this because of the nature of
07:15office work.
07:16And I'm hoping we can lead the way in New York.
07:18I'm hoping we can lead the way in New York City.
Comments