Could a financial crisis break more than the financial market?
Quietly, America turned Socialist. Mamdani’s rise reveals what really broke about 20 years ago. Was it starting in the 2008 crisis, or just accelerated?
New York City almost elected a socialist mayor. Not a progressive or a reformer but a self-identified socialist with a platform that would have been unimaginable even a decade ago.
Many people are still trying to process what happened. Perhaps it is simpler; we planted these seeds in 2008. We are just living through the harvest now.
The handling of the financial crisis shifted the US values
The Great Financial Crisis didn’t just crash the housing market; it broke the balance of American capitalism. The federal government and the Fed intervened to save financial institutions after letting Lehman Brothers collapse. The remaining institutions were deemed “Too Big to Fail.” Washington borrowed trillions to backstop private losses. What was once an almost free market became a managed economy. The dream of becoming more European started becoming a reality. Not with the French baguette, but more with the downside of the European economy.
Paul Volcker once said, “If they’re too big to fail, they’re too big.
But instead of breaking up risk, we scaled it and socialized the downside.
Since then, more than $6.7 trillion has been added to the Fed’s balance sheet. Globally, central banks injected $25 trillion into the financial system. Most of it didn’t reach ordinary Americans but went into asset markets. Home prices, stocks, and rents exploded. Ownership became a luxury.
Meanwhile, over 42 million Americans now hold student debt totaling nearly $1.77 trillion. Millennials and Gen Z were promised opportunity. What they got was inflation, stagnation, and debt traps.
“Inflation is taxation without legislation” warned Milton Friedman
When Despair Turns Political
Then came COVID. The government began putting cash directly into people’s pockets, essentially piloting a Universal Basic Income. It worked for a while, until inflation hit. And the Fed had to hike rates, once again pushing ownership further out of reach for the next generation.
Enter Mamdani. He isn’t an outlier, a product of this environment. His policies such as municipalized housing, wealth taxes, are abolishing traditional “democrats” policing and aimed at overturning what he and his supporters see as a rigged system.
But many worry that his vision isn’t just anti-capitalist. It is anti-liberal in the classical sense. And that concern deepens when you examine the company he keeps and the rhetoric he has adopted.
What does a society openly tolerating Antisemitism, freedom restriction, and altering private property mean?
Mamdani has refused to condemn explicitly antisemitic slogans like “From the river to the sea.” He’s called Zionism “structurally colonial” and aligned himself with groups that traffic in dangerous conspiracies. While he denies antisemitism personally, his public stance and alliances have already rattled Jewish communities across New York.
Let’s be clear, rejecting capitalism does not require rejecting pluralism, nor does fighting inequality excuse hatred in another form.
The American system may be overdue for reform. But if that reform comes tethered to policies that weaken individual rights, and political movements that tolerate open prejudice, then what kind of future are we building? It seems we are just repeating the mistakes of other collapsed societies… Maybe with better branding.
What will happen to the New York we love?
New York didn’t vote for Mamdani in a vacuum. It voted for him because the generation raised after 2008 is tired of a system that no longer works for them, or is simply tired of a generation of similar, old-fashioned politicians. All are slowly pushing or just letting the progressive destruction of the city's traditional values. But in turning to someone like Mamdani, we must be careful not to lose sight of what actually makes a society free, open, and worth saving.
This isn’t just an economic story. It’s a civic one. And it’s just getting started.
What will happen to the New York we love?
Think encore!