In 1975, Wall Street declared war on New York, sending the city into a fiscal crisis. A forgotten public banking proposal in the state assembly could have stopped it — and put both the city and the country on the path to socialized finance.

It’s 1975, and Wall Street has just refused to purchase New York City’s short-term notes. It’s nothing less than a coordinated credit strike that instantly lit the match on the worst fiscal crisis in the city’s history. Suddenly unable to roll over its debt, New York teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, even though the banks had happily underwritten the same notes for years — and made millions doing it.

A few weeks later, something remarkable happened. The Speaker of the New York State Assembly, Stanley Steingut — a consummate machine politician — int

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