It’s not just because Lander is a knee-jerk leftist who rivals Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani when it comes to his out-of-touch patter on economic policy.

He’s also a dullard seemingly unaware of the core function of the job he’s held for the last four years.

Lander, as the city’s chief fiscal officer, is the fiduciary, investment adviser and custodian of the city’s $300 billion pension fund system.

He’s supposed to make sure the funds are invested in securities that grow in value so they can “fully fund” the retirement accounts of all the city’s police, firefighters and teachers.

Those accounts are not fully funded, and the shortfalls are poised to grow once Mamdani gets into office.

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Recall the mayor-elect’s pledges to raise taxes and turn the city into Moscow-on-the-Hudson, which will certainly cause more businesses and high earners to leave.

Now Lander wants to oust BlackRock from managing city retirement money because it refuses to embrace his weird green energy agenda, which envisions a future of windmills and bicycles along the streets of New York instead of cars — and energy bills that no one can afford.

Consider: BlackRock doesn’t suck at money management, it’s actually quite good at it.

Its CEO, Larry Fink, is considered among the best risk managers in the business.

BlackRock’s big crime is that it doesn’t want to be an accomplice to Lander’s wacky, unrealizable and maybe illegal campaign on the climate — i.e. reducing carbon emissions with brute force.

In Lander’s mind, the stocks of companies that drill for oil, frack natural gas, keep our lights on or make sure the AC works in the summer are pure evil.

The comptroller, of course, prefers those that embrace green energy — like those useless windmills off the coast of New Jersey that give the state some of the highest electricity bills on the planet.

What’s more, Lander literally wants the city to demand that all of BlackRock’s clients’ portfolios — not just the NYC retirement system’s — comply with his whims under threat of NYC yanking its funds.

Dumb and dumber

It’s among the most narcissistically dumb ideas to ever come out of a public official.

Let’s get real: little Brad Lander ain’t doing nothing to stop global warming; China keeps polluting and adding to carbon emissions every day. So does India and the rest of the ­developing world.

Plus, those green stocks often really do really suck (Google “Solyndra”) while companies that invest in good old-fashioned crude like ExxonMobil — with a five-year spike in its shares of nearly 200% far outstripping the S&P — really don’t.

BlackRock’s CEO, it should also be noted, is an odd target for Lander.

Fink was one of the key proponents of so-called Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investing, which took into account carbon emissions of companies in which it invested.

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He got a bad rap from the political right for it, and BlackRock lost business — that is until Fink clarified the company’s position: As Fink told Lander years ago, the NYC comptroller can’t dictate what BlackRock does for the Texas state pension.

Plus, if BlackRock sold all of its $225 billion in energy-related stocks — the largest energy slug owned by any money manager — it would probably crash all major stock market indices.

How is that good for NYC retirees?

It isn’t, of course.

It shows how little thought Lander probably put into this attention-grabbing charade as he reportedly gears up to run for a seat representing lower Manhattan and progressive parts of Brooklyn in Congress in the 2026 midterms.

It also shows why lefty Manhattan Borough President and former City Councilman Mark Levine, who will replace Lander as comptroller, should just ignore his predecessor’s recommendation.

Levine probably won’t, of course, given how progressively cringey NYC politics has become.

I should point out that neither Lander nor Levine has the complete final say over where managers of the city’s retirement system invest all that money.

That say belongs to the trustees of the funds, of which the comptroller has one vote, while the mayor appoints members as well.

That doesn’t mean Lander should be given a pass in the court of public opinion for making this an issue.

Nor should he be given a pass when it comes to his legal obligations as city comptroller, i.e. maximizing returns in the retirement system, as opposed to tilting at windmills.

A fully functioning government should take action before Lander or whoever replaces him does even more damage to a city that has been losing population and business for years.

But our local prosecutors (Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, et al) are too busy jailing citizens defending themselves from criminals to make sure a raging leftist doesn’t defund pension funds that are already underfunded — and bound to get worse as the city goes full-on socialist under our new mayor.

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Elaine Silverberg, 73, has been embroiled in a 13-year feud to recoup the money from the nation’s largest lender, which refused making the payout because of a clerical error by her late husband.

The Teaneck, NJ, grandmother’s David-vs.-Goliath battle — reported exclusively by The Post in November –– caught the attention of two insurance executives more than 600 miles away in North Carolina.

Silverberg has been battling America’s biggest bank for more than 13 years in a bid to get it to pay out. Tamara Beckwith

Roy Messer, a 57-year-old health insurance broker from Charlotte, and his business partner Bill Rice, also 57, said they were shocked by the penny-pinching from the bank run by Jamie Dimon and took matters into their own hands.

“I couldn’t believe for such an amount of money that they wouldn’t want to do the right thing. There is no doubt that her husband would have wanted that money to go to her and his kids,” Rice said.

“I imagine that for Jamie Dimon, this is like a nickel falling out of his pocket. I would like to believe that he just doesn’t know (about this).”

Messer, who served in the Marine Corps between 1986 and 1989, said he was “touched” by Silverberg’s story and that wiring her the money was “the right thing to do.”

“I don’t know her and I could have very easily just turned the page. But when something like that reaches out and grabs you, I looked at it and thought: ‘What if that was my mother?’” he told The Post.

Silverberg was left stunned by their gesture, saying it “restored my faith in mankind.”

“In this crazy world we live in, it is remarkable that such kindness also exists. I am flabbergasted at their extreme generosity,” she told The Post.

Messer and Rice learned of Silverberg’s ordeal after reading The Post’s story in December. Courtesy of Roy Messer

JPMorgan declined to comment, but a senior source inside the bank said the rules governing its pension fund ban any exceptions from being carved out.

JPMorgan insiders told The Post in December that the company would never back down after Grinches at the bank denied Silverberg’s repeated pleas to hand over her husband Mel’s $331-a-month pension pot.

According to Silverberg, a former government administrator, the fully vested cash pile is worth an estimated $53,000.

Jaime Dimon CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

But JPMorgan bean counters said Mel, a former system analyst with Chase Manhattan Bank until 1979, failed to fill in the necessary forms before he unexpectedly died at the age of 43 from multiple organ failure in 1988.

Chase Manhattan went on to merge with JPMorgan in 2000. The Wall Street giant posted record profits of $58.5 billion last year, with Dimon raking in $39 million in compensation.

The Ronald Reagan administration passed the Retirement Equity Act in 1984 so spouses like Silverberg would automatically benefit if their loved ones died.

The late Mel Silverberg (left) with Elaine and two of their daughters in 1973. Provided to the NY Post

JPMorgan insists it wrote to Mel on three separate occasions asking him to elect survivor coverage after he stepped down. His widow says none of that correspondence ever arrived at the family home.

She said pension managers can only dig up documentation that they say proves they contacted Mel in 1990 — two years after he died.

Silverberg even once enlisted US Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and ex-Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) of the Bronx to convince the firm to change its mind, to no avail.

The post Exclusive | Widow shunned by JPMorgan in feud over husband’s $53K pension gets surprise check – appeared first on Our Story Insight.