New York Taxi Mogul, Seeking a Bailout, Says He’s Too Big to Fail

The New York Times reports:

One of New York City’s largest taxi fleet owners is asking for a bailout.

Evgeny Freidman, known as Gene, said in an interview Thursday that the taxi industry, like the financial industry, was too big to fail. He would like the city to guarantee taxi medallion loans, which would induce banks to extend more credit to fleet owners like him, and he compares this approach to the federal government’s actions to save large banks and insurers in 2008.

“I still see Bernanke saying, ‘I hate A.I.G.; I don’t want to give them any more money, but I have to,’ ” he said, referring to the former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and the large insurer that was bailed out in 2008.

Mr. Freidman’s problem is not unlike that of any homeowner who bought real estate in the early part of the century thinking prices could only go up. In New York, medallions, the license that is required to operate a yellow taxi, are fixed in number, and their price rose for decades because of increased demand and restricted supply.

Rent-seeker wants bailout! No surprise here.