When Zohran Mamdani resoundingly won the Democratic mayoral primary for New York in June, Wall Street and Silicon Valley erupted in outrage at his promises of free buses, rent freezes and city-run groceries.
Hedge fund billionaires Bill Ackman and Dan Loeb, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase and tech entrepreneur Brian Armstrong of Coinbase all warned about the risk of heavy-handed interference in the city’s economy.
David Solomon, chief executive of Goldman Sachs, took to LinkedIn to slam Mamdani’s proposal to freeze city-controlled rents. “When New York tried it in the 1920s and 1960s, it limited affordable housing, narrowed investment in new housing, and made housing outside the control area more expensive,” he wrote.