New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg's take on all things Irish

I think there’s a lot of things you can do, and what I’ve got to do, I’ve said to my staff -- assume we only have a number of days between now and December 31, because that’s when you know for sure -- don’t walk away from controversial things.

Somebody said to me, for example, we should postpone the experiment of closing off Broadway through Times Square and Herald Square. I said, ‘If you ever had an argument to convince me to do it, you just made it,’ that we should just go ahead and not walk away. But I think the public recognizes that what I look for.

I don’t know about the polls, I think it’s how you ask the question. When I walk down the street or take the subway, this morning I just noticed a lot of people smiled, ‘Good morning Mayor, good morning.’ If they didn’t like you, they wouldn’t say nasty things necessarily, but they wouldn’t reach out.

How do you feel at this stage of your career?

I’m 67 years old and I like people. If I didn’t like people I’d be in the wrong job. I love going on the subway, I love walking on the streets, I was at a baseball game the other day. With Brian Williams and his wife, at the Yankee game, which was not a great game because it was not competitive. 

But people every place … the Puerto Rican Day parade, great response from one end to the other. I remember the first time I did it, somebody hired some people to boo on both sides.

Everybody is deeply concerned about the economy. Obviously you‘re more than just a mayor, you’re a brilliant entrepreneur yourself. How do you feel? 

We have a crisis of confidence, and we sort of create what we’re afraid of.  We haven’t been saving for a long time, we’ve been overspending, not being prudent, but nobody wanted to end it, so when they say who’s responsible for the recession, I would say look in the mirror --we’re all responsible.

Nobody wanted to stop people getting mortgages, nobody wanted to stop stocks going up, nobody wanted to stop the ability to buy anything, if you wanted to use your credit card or mortgage your house for some money. So we’re all sort of part of that.

And then all of a sudden everybody realized, for a variety of reasons, but really had nothing to do with the real cause, what came out of it. You have these mortgage products, and lots of the derivative stuff, and then all of a sudden you kind of get scared and somebody says they’re not going to buy it, which meant they didn’t have any value, which all of a sudden created its own reality.

Here people said, ‘Oh my goodness, I’ve been living beyond my means. So let’s save.’ And once you start saving, you don’t spend. And then all of a sudden people that are working at the factory don’t have jobs. So that feeds on itself.

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