The Year the Big Apple Went Bust (1976) is the title of a book by New York (NY) Times reporter Fred Ferretti, who died in 2022 at age 90. The book chronicles New York City’s fiscal crisis in 1975.
   
     
Wikipedia: History of New York City (1946-1977)
Fiscal crisis
US economic stagnation in the 1970s hit New York City particularly hard, amplified by a large movement of middle-class residents to the suburbs, which drained the city of tax revenue. In February 1975, New York City entered a serious fiscal crisis. Under mayor Abraham Beame, the city had run out of money to pay for normal operating expenses, was unable to borrow more, and faced the prospect of defaulting on its obligations and declaring bankruptcy. The city admitted an operating deficit of at least $600 million, though the actual total city debt was more than $11 billion and the city was unable to borrow money from the credit markets. There were numerous reasons for the crisis, including overly optimistic forecasts of revenues, underfunding of pensions, use of capital allocations and reserves for operating costs, and poor budgetary and accounting practices. Another perspective given on this matter is that as the most capitalised city of the United States at that time, New York hosted an array of welfare and benefits for its people, including nineteen public hospitals, mass transit facilities and most importantly, New York City provided higher education for free with the Municipal University system. The city government was reluctant to confront municipal labor unions; an announced “hiring freeze” was followed by an increase in city payrolls of 13,000 people in one quarter, and an announced layoff of eight thousand workers resulted in only 436 employees leaving the city government.
 
OCLC WorldCat record
Amazon.com
The year the Big Apple went bust
Author: Fred Ferretti
Print Book, English, ©1976
Publisher: Putnam, New York, ©1976
Physical Description:
416 pages : portraits ; 22 cm
ISBN:
9780399116438, 0399116435
OCLC Number / Unique Identifier:
1991151
Subjects:
Debts, Public
Debts, Public New York (State) New York
Dettes publiques New York (État) New York
Finance, Public
Finance, Public New York (State) New York
Finances publiques New York (État) New York
New York (State) New York
Additional Physical Form Entry:
Online version:
Year the Big Apple went bust.
Ferretti, Fred.
610028385
   
13 March 2022, New York (NY) Times, “Fred Ferretti, Reporter Turned Food Writer, Dies at 90” by Sam Roberts, pg. A25, cols. 1-3:
He covered every aspect of dining for The Times from 1969 to 1986 and then became a columnist for Gourmet magazine.
 
Fred Ferretti, who covered a panoply of breaking news events for New York City newspapers before becoming best known for his prolific writing on cuisine, comestibles and cooking for The New York Times and then Gourmet magazine, died on Monday at his home in Montclair, N.J. He was 90.
(...)
Earlier, he drew on his shoe-leather newspaper reporting to analyze one of the major stories he covered for The Times, New York City’s fiscal crisis of the mid-1970s, in his book “The Year the Big Apple Went Bust,” published in 1976.
     
Montclair (NJ) Local
Obituary: Armand J. ‘Fred’ Ferretti
Published: March 19, 2022
Armand J. “Fred” Ferretti of Montclair, an award-winning journalist best known for his work in The New York Times and Gourmet magazine from the 1970s to the early 2000s, died peacefully in his sleep on March 7, 2022. He was 90.
(...)
Mr. Ferretti was recognized by his colleagues and contemporaries at times over his long career, including receiving the New York Press Club’s Heart of New York Award in 1977.
 
He authored five books, all relating to his life and reportorial experiences.