Despite growing rumors to the contrary, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg says he is not running for president in 2012.
AP
In an interview Thursday morning with CNBC, the billionaire executive and head of Bloomberg LP denied that a spate of high-profile policy speeches was paving the way for a run at the nation's top elected office.
"I'm not going to be running for president," he said. "I have eleven-hundred and nineteen days left in my job. I'm looking forward to today and every other one of them."
Instead, he said he's speaking out on national issues such as immigration and taxation because they are important not only in Washington but also in New York, where problems with unemployment and the housing market reflect the national picture.
Bloomberg gave a wide-ranging policy speech during an economic summit Wednesday in Brooklyn.
"If you think about what I talked about yesterday, these are things that are important to New York City," he said during his television interview. "We've created an enormous number of jobs in the private sector ... but we need more help from Washington."
"Immigration is not something we can fix locally. It's a national issue," he added. "A lot of the regulation is federal or state regulation. We need Albany, where our state capital is, and Washington to come together to do those kinds of things that will let cities ... go and create the right kind of conditions."
Bloomberg was a lifelong Democrat but switched to Republican when running for mayor, a position he secured just days after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. He was re-elected in 2005 and won a third term as an independent in 2009.