Keyword: bankrupt
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As the state Senate finished voting Saturday on a bill to extend a tax on managed care plans, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg told reporters at the back of the room, "That is what's called a supermajority." Gov. Jerry Brown is expected to sign the spending plan before the next fiscal year begins July 1.
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Many states, especially California and Illinois, have had severe pension underfunding problems for many years. However, new actuarial pension rules will finally force states to admit the problem. Thus, it should not be surprising that talk of "technical bankruptcy" and “service insolvency” is growing. Here are some pertinent ideas from California on the Brink: Pension Crisis About to Get Worse Moody’s new credit standards for public pensions would nearly double the unfunded liabilities for state and local pension plans in California to $328.6 billion from $128.3 billion. California has the second lowest credit rating at Standard & Poor’s of all 50 states;...
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Retirement Will Kill You Teddy Roosevelt once said “the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” Recent research suggests he may have been more right than he knew: Life’s “best prize” might actually extend life itself. Our common perception is that retirement is a time when we can relax and take better care of ourselves after stressful careers. But what if work itself is beneficial to our health, as several recent studies suggest? One of them, by Jennifer Montez of Harvard University and Anna Zajacova of the University of Wyoming,...
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The Social Security program faces $9.6 trillion in unfunded liabilities over the next 75 years, which is up $1 trillion from last year’s projection of $8.6 trillion, according to the latest report from Social Security’s board of trustees. The unfunded liability is the amount that has been promised in benefits to people now alive that will not be funded by the tax revenue the system is expected to take in to pay for those benefits. (The Social Security trustees calculate the unfunded liability for a period of 75 years into the future, from 2012 to 2087). …
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Bidding wars are breaking out. Foreign buyers are moving in. A new wave of contemporary architecture is taking hold. And a growing class of tech executives is helping to fuel the boom. All this is happening in Washington, D.C., a town known for its relative affordability compared with cities such as New York and San Francisco, and for architecture about as exciting as its fashion sense. Today, home prices in Washington and its surrounding suburbs are rapidly rising to new levels. As other American cities have been buffeted by an uneven economy, Washington's property market has been buoyed two forces...
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Broke Detroit's Pension Fund "Trustees" Use Public Funds To Fund Hawaii Trip Tyler Durden 05/25/2013 12:46 -0400 "When you have city employees, police, and firefighters have taken pay cuts, it doesn't look good," is the somewhat understated response from Detroit's emergency manager to the city's latest debacle. Amid the deepening financial crisis the crumbling region faces, four trustees of its public pension funds spent $22,000 of retirement funds to attend a conference at Waikiki Beach, Honolulu. "It's one of these things we trustees must do to stay on top of the field," is how one of the trustees defended the...
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The city of Detroit may be facing a deepening financial crisis but that hasn't stopped four trustees of its public pension funds from spending $22,000 of retirement system funds to attend a conference in Hawaii this week. One well-attended session covered how to avoid front-page scandals. According to presenter Lydia Lee, a pension attorney from Oklahoma, the session touched on a topic familiar back in Detroit: The indictment this spring of two former city pension officials for an alleged $200 million bribery and kickback scheme, in a case that will come to trial next March.
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Acting state Democratic Party Chairwoman Nancy Worley lowered her head and slowly shook it side to side when summing up the financial condition of her once powerful party. "We're broke, broke, broke," Worley told the party's Executive Board in a special called meeting Frida. How broke is broke? Worley didn't sugar coat the answer. "This is my 18th day as chair and thirty minutes after I took over on April 22nd the landlord of the building where our party headquarters are came in and said he wanted us out, that the rent was overdue and was always overdue," said Worley....
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DETROIT (WWJ) - Detroit’s emergency manager says the city is bleeding much more red ink than originally thought. That’s what Kevyn Orr told WWJ City Beat Reporter Vickie Thomas in an exclusive one-on-one interview. “The situation is severe,” Orr said. “It’s worse that we originally thought. It ain’t good.” With just 39 days under his belt, Orr is already putting the final touches on a draft of his 40-plus page financial report, which must be submitted to the state on Monday. “I’ve been spending virtually every day from March 25 when I got here, looking at the city’s financials. This...
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Tuesday, May 07, 2013 The Road to Nowhere Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog The Heritage Institute report estimates that under amnesty the average legalized illegal household will take in $43,900 in benefits while paying a little over a third of that in taxes. Those numbers are grim from the standpoint of a tottering economy being asked to take on an even bigger pile of debt and they reveal an even grimmer view of the future. Set aside the political debates, the tensions over multiculturalism, entitlements and the great political divide, and those numbers reek of a...
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Obama has done it. He has brought America down. It only took him just over four years. The Republicans could have stopped him. They didn’t. How did the nihilistic left succeed in destroying America? Simple. They learned just a little of the capitalism they hate, and they drove your nation into outright bankruptcy. And here is what the GOP has to say about it: just about nothing. The once-mighty United States is now the most indebted nation on Earth. In round numbers, here are just some of the vital statistics as the patient dies: National debt: $17 trillion, or $50,000...
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The Greek government began its first mass-firing of public-sector workers in more than 100 years this week, part of an effort to lay off 180,000 by 2015 under Europe-imposed austerity. Pushed by its European creditors amid its crippling economic crisis, Greece began this week to do something it hasn't done in more than 100 years: fire public-sector workers en masse. Following weeks of tough negotiations with its lenders – the "troika" of the International Monetary Fund, the European Union, and the European Central Bank – the Greek government started laying off public-sector workers in an effort to implement the austerity...
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Robert Wagner has written one of the most intriguing articles I've seen here at Seeking Alpha, titled "90% Of Green Stocks Will Go Bankrupt ... So Buy The Sector?" He's right -- 90% of green stocks will go bankrupt. But this is true in every area of technology, and always has been. Only one computer company from the 1950s remains a player in the space: IBM (IBM). (Honeywell (HON) is in other businesses and Unisys (UIS) is not a mainstream player.) Only two companies from the 1970s PC revolution are still in the game -- Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft (MSFT)....
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SPRINGFIELD — Illinois is looking for the railroad equivalent of a unicorn — a super-fast, super-clean, super-cheap locomotive that is not real. The Federal Railroad Administration has placed Illinois in charge of buying 35 new, “next generation” locomotives to serve the to-be built high-speed rail lines in Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, California and Washington, even though the locomotives do not yet exist. “Currently these are not being manufactured,” said Joe Schacter, high-speed rail point man for the Illinois Department of Transportation. “We are fully confident that such a locomotive can be manufactured and will be manufactured.” Schacter said Illinois has $175...
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A Florida food stamp recruiter is tasked with enrolling at least 150 senior citizens in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, The Washington Post reports in a profile about SNAP outreach. Following 56 year old recruiter Dillie Nerios perform her task, to appeal to seniors to get them to sign up for food stamp benefits, The Post offers additional insight into the program — which has reached record participation levels in recent months — currently feeding more than 47 million people, or one in seven Americans. The story follows recruiter Dillie Nerios, 56, as she encourages approaches potentially SNAP-eligible seniors to...
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You know a city is in deep trouble when its mayor invites Wall Street but not the press and not private citizens to a closed meeting to discuss the future, including a sell-off of city assets. Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, whose municipality has the lowest credit rating of the five most-populous U.S. cities, did just that. My translation: Philadelphia is bankrupt. However, that easily discernible fact will of course be denied until it officially happens. Please consider Philadelphia Holds Closed Meeting With Wall StreetPhiladelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, whose municipality has the lowest credit rating of the five most-populous U.S. cities,...
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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Bankrupt San Bernardino will resume paying into the state pension fund on July 1, but the California city will continue to renege on other debts including payments to bondholders, according to a new budget released late Thursday. Nearly a year after it halted contributions to America's biggest pension fund, San Bernardino will resume payments to Calpers at the start of the new fiscal year - but continue to not pay other creditors, according to the budget. San Bernardino will not make interest and principal payments on $50 million in pension bonds issued in 2005, according to...
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However, of more immediate concern is how will the government now plug a hole of up to €1.3 billion in its €5.3 billion 2013 budget. A solution has, luckily, presented itself: bypass the unconstitutional provisions by paying government workers not in cash, but in government bills! From the WSJ: The Portuguese government is considering a plan to pay public workers and pensioners one month of their salary in treasury bills rather than cash after a high court ruled out wage cuts, a person familiar with the situation said Sunday. "This is one of the ideas being considered," the person said....
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Tens of thousands of health care professionals, union workers and community activists hired as "navigators" to help Americans choose Obamacare options starting Oct. 1 will be paid up to $48 an hour, more than six times the federal minimum wage of $7.25, according to new regulations issued Wednesday. The 63-page rule covering navigators, drawn up by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, also said the government will provide free translators for those not fluent in English -- no matter what their native language is. It is still not clear how many navigators will be required. California, however, provides a...
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Were California's state government a business, it would be a candidate for insolvency with a negative net worth of $127.2 billion, according to an annual financial report issued by State Auditor Elaine Howle and the Bureau of State Audits. The report, which covers the fiscal year ending June 30, 2012, says that the state's negative status -- all of its assets minus all of its liabilities -- increased that year, largely because it spent more than it received in revenue. During the 2011-12 fiscal year, the state's general fund spent $1.7 billion more than it received in revenues and wound...
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