NEW YORK -- Citing the need for his financial expertise during a time of crisis, the billionaire New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Thursday that he would seek a third term as mayor.
The bid to stay in office until 2013 would require overturning the city's term limits law, which currently restricts an incumbent to two terms.
The financial crisis on Wall Street meant some of the city's largest and most established employers "are in turmoil -- and others don’t even exist anymore," Bloomberg, 65, said at a press conference.
New York "may well be on the verge of a meltdown, and it’s up to us to rise to the occasion," he added.
The city's voters twice rejected the idea of removing term limits in the 1990s, but Bloomberg said it would be up to the City Council to vote to amend term limits.
A Wall Street trader who made a fortune after starting a financial data and news company, Bloomberg was first elected in 2001 and oversaw the economic revival of the city following the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The crisis on Wall Street presents New York, with a population of more than eight million people, with an uncertain economic outlook, given that the city relies heavily on revenues raised from the financial sector.
"As a businessman with expertise on Wall Street and finance, and as a mayor who has balanced budgets and delivered services, I can tell you that the enormity of the challenges ahead should not be underestimated," Bloomberg said.
Nationally "there will be no easy fixes" to the economy, Bloomberg said, noting that a planned $700-billion bailout for troubled financial institutions "is not a magic bullet.
"It’s a badly needed, short-term, stop-gap measure but it will by no means make all our problems disappear.
"This is not the time for fantasy. It is not a magic bullet," said Bloomberg.
Bloomberg has a personal fortune of some $20 billion, making him the eighth richest person in the country, according to Forbes magazine. His popularity is due in part to a drop in crime and advances in education in the city.
The mayor is also famous for banning smoking in restaurants and bars, and for forcing some food outlets to label calorie counts.
A lifelong Democrat, Bloomberg switched parties and was elected as a Republican in 2001 and re-elected in 2005, then became a political independent in 2007 while dropping hints that he would run for president.
In the end he did not run, though he was mentioned as a potential running mate to either of the major party candidates.
Born February 14, 1942 in a middle-class Jewish family from Massachusetts, Bloomberg graduated from Harvard Business School and banked his first million dollars before his 40th birthday.
By the time he was 30, in 1972, he had already been made partner at the prestigious brokerage firm Salomon Brothers, which he left with a golden handshake of $10 million in 1981 after the company was acquired by the Phibro Corporation.
Bloomberg then developed a financial information computer terminal system to deliver up-to-the-minute securities data, then created a media empire, introducing Bloomberg News in 1990, followed by Bloomberg Radio and TV.
