After weeks of striking and 15 days without food, New York City’s taxi drivers were served a crucial victory as Mayor Bill de Blasio finally agreed to a debt restructuring plan building off an initial program that already eliminated $21.4 million of debt for individual drivers who took out loans to secure their medallions. Two dozen drivers have already had their debt fully forgiven and more than 1,100 have been interviewed to participate in the improved Taxi Medallion Relief Program. An individual taxi driver in New York City is defined as an owner-driver who has five or fewer medallions. Those drivers owed an average of half a million dollars for their medallions and faced staggering monthly payments that have now been capped at $1,122. The city’s largest lender for medallions, Marblegate, has agreed to “restructure outstanding loans to a principal balance of $200,000, which will be constituted as a $170,000 guaranteed loan, plus a City grant of $30,000,” per a press release. “The terms of the new loan will include a 5% interest rate and a 20-year, fully amortizing term.” Marblegate became the largest lender because it bought thousands of loans from numerous companies that were shut down by the federal government following the 2014 medallion collapse that saw individual medallion prices skyrocket to more than $1 million. Jacobin has an excellent write-up on the damage wrought by banks, hedge funds, and the city of New York itself that directly led to the medallion bubble’s boom and bust. Read more