new york city 2009 is san francisco 2001 - NYC to get worse

i lived in san francisco 1997 through 2002. so i saw the giant hey day of the internet bubble and also the precipitous decline. now, having been in new york from 2006 to present, i can say without a doubt that i see many obvious similarities (being in the front row for both calamities does beg the question of whether i am the harbinger of disaster). here's a list of some of the similarities:

• when i moved to new york, everyone i knew had a job. today, i would say about 20% of those people are not gainfully employed yet still live in new york city. in san francisco, about the same happened, but by 2002, those without jobs had moved to another city (many new york!)
• in san francisco, there were some people with millions of dollars and others with nothing. the fairness gene that humans have gets irritated by this, but that was the reality. smart people made money and smarter people didn't make money in san francisco. dumb people made money in the dot coms and dumb people missed out too. there really seemed to be a massive luck component. as i survey the scene in new york, i see the same thing.
• real estate plummeted in SF and it has already declined quite a bit in new york. this report suggests that real estate could call by another 50% in NYC.
• the biggest similarity that i've noticed is people seem to vastly underestimate the depths of the problems. as businesses were laying people off in the tech sector, people clinged to hope that this was temporary and would soon turn around. certainly tech has made a comeback but not nearly to its heights. one only needs to look at the tech laden nasdaq to see that it's a far cry from the nearly nasdaq 5000 level. certainly new york will recover. but all this speak about recovery by year end is preposterous.

and with all this going on, new york city and the state are vowing to raise taxes. take a look at the chart below. the financial implosion along with the taxes are going to at least temporarily make new york a very sad city.