Illinois is Collapsing: It's Coming Everywhere

Market-Ticker ^ | June 10, 2017 | Karl Denninger

[Hiryusan]

We need a state bankruptcy law...
If states go bankrupt, they revert to territorial status.
- all bonds, contracts, pensions void
- no reps, no senators
- areas within may petition for separate statehood, once
solvency is proven

[virgil]

I blame it on Blago, Quinn and Madigan, Chicago, Cook Cty. Rauner? No way. IL was in much better shape before democrats took over.

[arthurus]

California seems to be the maximum example of the syndrome.

[Tonytitan]

This was decades in the making...and both parties can be blamed.

Not in Illinois. And definitely not in Chicago.

[proudpapa]

Chicago has overpaid teachers who can’t teach...in many cases because the students aren’t ready or willing to learn.

The cops are overpaid crime historians that avoid the worst neighborhoods in the daytime and most neighborhoods during the night.

The politicians are so corrupt that they don’t even worry about being caught chasing a bribe... because everybody does it.

I left 16 years ago... and never looked back.

[virgil]

IL had a democrat governor from 2003 to 2015. I think they’ve had control of the General Assembly for a while too.

[arthurus]

Not relevant to the thread but thanks.

[arthurus]

Now that’s sensible and an excellent subject for an Amendment and whatever else can be Constitutionally done short of that.

[virgil]

Jim Edgar may have been a RINO, but IL was in pretty good shape when he was governor. So, I blame democrats.

[tenthirteen]

Back in the mid fifties the comptroller of NYS set up the Fire and Police pension. Nelson Rockefeller was the govenor. The NYS Assembly passed legislation that only ONE person could access the funds in the pension system, the sitting NYS Comptroller. Not the Gov, not the assembly, not anyone. Today it is most likely the number retirement system in the US, having approx 150 Billion dollars in there. Over the years the social trouble makers tried to grab that cash, the courts wouldnt let them. It is so good that local taxpayers no more contribute to it. It virtually pays for itself.

So, it can be done.

[Daffynition]

Connecticut elbows its way to the front of the line....

*ME! ME! {{{stutter-stutter-stutter}}}. I'm First!ME! ME!*

[reg45]

100% ditto

[StAnDeliver]

There is NOTHING so disgusting as to watch the HARD-WORKING downstate Freeper Illini SUFFER so miserably because of the boil on the forehead of Illinois known as CHIRAQ.

[Captain Peter Blood]

So many states are underfunded pension wise, that takes a lot of time to happen. Same with Illinois, it just takes more than 8 to 15 years. Look at the national mess, it has taken decades of political promises to get us to the fiscal mess we have.

[StAnDeliver]

We only encounter the de minimus fallout: satellite counties, some minor urban problems of our own...

But Jesus H. Christ the imbalance between Joe Wheat Farmer of Mount Vernon and Rastus Gibbmedat of Cabrini Green is vastly, steeply more catastrophic than Rastus of Harlem and Joe Apple Farmer north of Albany, NY.

[MrEdd]

I wouldn’t put anyone still alive today anywhere near the top of the blame heap.

We knew decades ago that it would eventually be impossible to balance the math on pensions. And (at least where I lived) there was article after article detailing what eventually would happen. Like Whitewater, understanding the articles meant applying mathematics. Most people chose to believe whatever they wanted.

Today, most of the politicians who peddled these schemes around the country are gone. Old age and death shielded them from the blame.

You could try to blame the boomers for continuing the insanity but most of them were too young to vote as this all began.

[JohnBovenmyer]

It's been going on a lot longer than that. I'm a 2nd generation Doc. Dad and most other Docs, on both sides the Mississippi here in the Quad Cities, weren't taking Illinois Medicaid patients in the 1960s because they knew dang well they'd never get paid a cent for it and weren't allowed to charge anyone else for it. Iowa Medicaid didn't pay great but you could rely on what they'd pay. Nowadays I'm periodically blindsided by some folks who allegedly have commercial medical insurance which refuses to pay for my services... until Illinois gets around to paying the corresponding insurance premiums for Illinois state employees.

Illinois has been de facto bankrupt for 50 years, paying for year n expenses from year n+2 tax revenues. Unless the year n expenses are goodies to the unions that run the state, or the welfare mob that elects it. All the while keeping just the one promise the ruling party values, to keep growing those goodies and so maintain their power.

Illinois needs to recoup as much as is possible, under something like RICO with treble damages for what is provable, what the crooked politicos, unions and welfare pimps have fraudulently taken. They need to write off the rest of their debt against the same. Then ban government unions, fire about 2/3 of their state workforce, rip out the welfare hammocks, zero their voting roles then restart them with strict voter id. But then I'm dreaming. What will happen is that more and more businesses and productive citizens will refuse to accept their late payments and big tax bills and flee the state. Until the parasites in Champaign and Chicago are left, alone with my dream as a nightmare.

[mia]

Connecticut started driving businesses away several years ago and now housing prices are dropping at an alarming rate.

[WMarshal]

What is even more amazing is that the same leftist criminals who wrote these criminal contracts are trying to hobble President Trump, the only person would could potentially improve the economy enough so that all these pensions didn’t go bust.

[Wolfie]

Medicare and Medicaid will wipe out the rest. Everywhere.