How Wall Street Tobacco Deals Left States With Billions in Toxic Debt

ProPublica ^ | August 8, 2014 | Cezary Podkul

[C19fan]

In November 1998, attorneys general from across the country sealed a historic deal with the tobacco industry to pay for the health care costs of smoking. Going forward, nearly every cigarette sold would provide money to the states, territories and other governments involved 2014 more than $200 billion in just the first 25 years of a legal settlement that required payments to be made in perpetuity.

Then, Wall Street came knocking with an offer many state and local politicians found irresistible: Cash upfront for those governments willing to trade investors the right to some or all of their tobacco payments. State after state struck deals that critics derided as "payday loans" but proponents deemed only prudent. As designed, private investors 2014 not the taxpayers 2014 would take the hit if people smoked less and the tobacco money fell short.

Things haven't exactly worked out as planned.

A ProPublica analysis of more than 100 tobacco deals since the settlement found that they are creating new fiscal headaches for states, driving some into bailouts or threatening to increase the cost of borrowing in the future.

[AntiScumbag]

Let’s simplify this. It’s got nothing to do with you being a servant.

You made a flat-out claim: “I (...) have docs to trace the history.”

So, you can put up or shut up.

Obviously, having already been given the chance to do so, you can’t or won’t produce anything, so anyone reading this will be able to decide whether you are 1) lying about your “documents,” or 2) an anti-Semite who wants to spread rubbish about European Jewish bankers, specifically the Rothschilds.

Absent documents which “trace the history” I will conclude that the later is the case.

[noinfringers2]

I will para phrase an old saying I learned many years ago even before I went overseas in WWII “ Sticks and stones can break my bones but your conclusions do nothing to harm or bother me”. I have some Jewish blood and from childhood have had good family relations with common working class Jewish people. I just don’t pony up to people because of wealth.