Posted on 07/13/2015 6:57:39 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
After years of warnings, financial reality is hitting home in Chicago, clouding Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s hope for a transformational legacy. In March, Moody’s downgraded the city’s credit rating to junk, but Chicago’s financial hole long predates its ratings slide. The trouble began emerging at least as far back as 2003, albeit under the radar. Then, as the Great Recession pummeled municipal budgets around the country, former Mayor Richard M. Daley engaged in dubious deals, such as the city’s parking-meter lease.
In 2010, as Daley’s tenure neared its close, Crain’s Chicago Business published an exposé on the troubling levels of debt that the mayor’s administration had accumulated. In 2013, after Daley had left office, the Chicago Tribune ran a series further detailing the city’s questionable debt practices, such as “scoop and toss”—that is, rolling over debt at higher cost as it came due, rather than paying it off. Chicago’s pension woes, along with Illinois’, started attracting media coverage—as did financial can-kicking by agencies like the Chicago Public Schools (CPS), which drained its reserves in 2012 and created a 2015 budget showing 14 months of revenue (“loopy,” said the Tribune).
So for several years now, the media have been telling Chicagoans that there’s a financial crisis. But it hasn’t really felt like one, at least not in the booming Loop and on the North Side.
The Moody’s downgrade triggered termination clauses in swaps contracts that the city and CPS had been using as part of their financial juggling act, creating a liquidity crisis. To deal with the downgrade fallout, the city plans to issue $1.1 billion in long-term bonds. While some sort of refinancing may be required, the proposed debt issue contains maneuvers similar to those that helped get Chicago into trouble in the first place
(Excerpt) Read more at city-journal.org ...
Hmm the sanctuary cities all seem to have the same problem. Overwhelming needs for more money. Now I wonder just why that is?.../s
Let’s play... FIND! THE! REPUBLICANNNN!
A larger tax on bullets should cure the problem.
Just goes to show you what decades of Republican rule bring to a city. If only Democrats could take the reins of power, all this would have been avoi.... wait, what? You’re saying ...?
Sheeeeyit. The only thing Rahm is interesting in transforming is the size of his wallet. Or purse.
And the wallets and purses of his cronies.
This is the libtard way of “dealing with the problem”. Passing the buck, generating higher debt, while managing to significantly raise taxes on whoever’s left. And not doing anything to curb the ever-increasing social spending.
Nah, Rahm’s internet use tax will do the job - and the sheep will comply.
If by a miracle a clean and decent personmwon election as mayor in Chicago, the powers that be down there wiuld murder him in the first week. Chicago is our internal Little Mexico.
Indeed, even many small cities. Mayors and City Councils vote themselves huge salaries and pensions to the detriment of the peons who voted them into office.
Yet, the peons vote them back into office time and again.
The sheeple are insane.
The progressive liberal democrat communists have one philosophy; take control, damn the facts, fill your pockets and leave a path of destruction behind you, it is no secret all one has to do is examine the overwhelming evidence.
Our Republic is in dire straights hanging by a very thin grossly frayed thread, the only question is can the thread hold until we get a true conservative in charge, the outlook is dim, if not and the communists prevail the thread will surely snap November 2016!
Hope for the best; get active and be vigilant, prepare for the worst.
I’m sure a bunch of people would gladly volunteer with a group to go up there and help burn Chicago down to give literal fire from every direction. Then, the city could be repopulated with a less corrupt and morally bankrupt population and many of the ills of the city would be dramatically diminished.
The underwriters should be shot..as well as any portfolio manager who buys this garbage..this makes Greece look good..
Running out of other people’s money is Chitcago. Think those 3rd world imports will pick up the shortfall? Nada!
I laugh at the LIB fools who live in these LIB cities, continuing to support the LIB criminals and the ferals.
Not to worry...when the ice age kick starts in a few years time Chicago will be covered by the Great Lake Glacier.
Excellent--- in the end they are their own worst enemies but will they fess up, take accountability and learn from mistakes? The answer is blowing in the wind.
“This is the libtard way of “dealing with the problem”. Passing the buck, generating higher debt, while managing to significantly raise taxes on whoever’s left. And not doing anything to curb the ever-increasing social spending.”
And there I thought Emanuel was Jewish, when it’s clear he’s Greek!
Wow, just wow!
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