From The Mayor's Desk ...

This is a difficult time for the economy — one of the toughest I've ever seen. The credit crunch intensified on Wall Street, sweeping the legs out from under major financial institutions. I was on the phone for much of the week with finance executives - people I've known a long time from my own days on Wall Street and from running my company. I also went down to Wash-ington, where I met with Treasury Se-cretary Hank Paulson and S.E.C. Chair-man Chris Cox, offering whatever in-sights and support I could.

My first priority, of course, is keeping New York City strong. As our na-tion's financial capital, we feel the mar-ket's fluctuations more intensely than anyone. I've been assured by the CEOs of Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers that the bulk of their New York-based jobs will be preserved. But not all jobs will be saved. And we all are going to feel some of the pain - because the money that Wall Street makes and spends affects just about everyone — from law firms and restaurants workers to taxi drivers and advertising agen-cies.

The one silver lining is that city gov-ernment is in a better position than ever to weather the downturn - and that's because we've prepared for it. The mar-ket is cyclical, so we knew that the good times wouldn't last forever. In the good times, we saved billions of dollars to meet future costs. And when storm clouds began to appear on the economic horizon last year, I directed every agency to cut its budget.

Many people have asked me what we can do now to turn the economy around. There's no quick fix, unfortunately. But in the short term, the federal government should take steps to stabilize the market and prevent the panics we've been seeing - and they've begun doing that.

In the long run, the federal government should focus on spurring growth and creating jobs by making major new investments in our nation's aging in-frastructure. That will help us stay com-petitive in the global economy. Wash-ington must also take action in an area of particular importance to New York City: Fixing our broken immigration system — so we once again welcome all of the entrepreneurs, engineers, scientists, and laborers who help make our economy thrive.

Here in New York, our responsibility continues to be making our city as attractive as possible to families and investors. As long as the best and bright-est want to live here, companies will need to be here. And we are living up to that responsibility: Recently, for in-stance, we released the latest round of progress reports which measure how well our schools are doing — an im-portant element of the accountability in education that is producing better results in the classroom. We also be-gan implementing new health standards for the meals we serve in our public hospitals, our senior centers, our schools, our day care centers, and other places — and that's going to put millions more New Yorkers on the path to a healthier future.

There's no telling when the turmoil on Wall Street will end, and the government is going to face some very tough decisions in the months ahead. But we've got to keep our chins up. We've been through tough times be-fore and come out even stronger. And if we continue to invest in our city's future, I know we will do so again.