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HARRIS COUNTY, Texas - The Harris County Toll Road Authority collected about $760 million in tolls the last fiscal year, yet it is improbable that any Harris County toll road will ever be “paid off,” Channel 2 Investigates has learned.   “Not with system financing, which allows us to borrow money at a favorable rate to build new projects,” said Patti Evans, the authority’s assistant director of communications.In other words, tolls collected today are not only used to pay down system-wide debt, but to construct more toll roads in the future.    “I think it is important to say —...

Dive Brief: The Illinois Tollway announced Thursday that it had set a preliminary budget for 2017 that includes $951 million for Move Illinois projects, as well as $336 million for a maintenance and operation program, according to Equipment World.Major Move Illinois capital initiatives planned for next year include the Illinois Route 390 Tollway ($374.5 million), SmartRoad upgrades to I-90 ($163.5 million), reconstruction of I-294 ($56.5 million) and expansion and maintenance of the I-PASS system. The remaining funds will go toward development, repair and maintenance.Move Illinois is a 15-year, $12-billion capital project program financed by bonds and tolls. The Illinois Tollway,...

Continuing delays on the construction of Interstate 69 between Bloomington and Martinsville have led to another ratings downgrade on the bonds issued to help finance the project. Standard & Poor’s has lowered its rating from BB+ to BB- on $244 million in bonds issued by the Indiana Finance Authority in 2014 for the interstate project. “The rating action reflects our view of increased construction risk at the project, which is eight months behind schedule and about 56 percent complete,” S&P Global Ratings credit analyst Tony Bettinelli said in the ratings agency’s statement on the downgrade last week. The 21-mile project,...

My country club locker room is a fascinating 19th hole observatory where human nature and intelligence often come into conflict. Almost all of my golfing buddies are risk takers by nature and many of them are gamblers — not just in the card room but also in the casinos in Las Vegas. Having spent some time in Sin City myself in my early 20s as one of the first blackjack counters, I was, and still am, most familiar with odds and the impossibility of beating the “House” in any game other than blackjack over a long period of time. Still,...

The State Department has admitted it lost a 2012 email between Hillary Clinton aide Jake Sullivan and a Clinton Foundation employee, which may demonstrate a financial conflict of interest for the former secretary of state. The Washington Examiner describes the message as follows: The email contained an attachment memo about Greek bonds — a significant detail given the heavy investments Clinton’s son-in-law, Marc Mezvinsky, was making in the Greek economic recovery during that same period.

Is it possible that a toll road could price itself right out of its market? That's essentially what the Pennsylvania Turnpike is prescribing for itself. Last week the Turnpike Commission informed us that tolls will go up a ninth consecutive year in 2017 — and stay on a steadily upward trajectory until 2044. And of course, there's no guarantee after that. By then, we can only hope, the turnpike will have morphed into a giant solar-powered car-train — for self-driving cars, of course. "Unsustainable" is an overused word these days, but it applies to the toll road's future. The turnpike...

Japan’s $1.3 trillion Government Pension Investment Fund lost 3.8 percent in the year ended March 31, or 5.3 trillion yen ($51 billion), the retirement manager said Friday in Tokyo. That’s the biggest drop since the fiscal year ended March 31, 2009. GPIF lost 10.8 percent on domestic equities and 9.6 percent on shares in other markets, while Japanese bonds handed the fund a 4.1 percent gain.

*snip* According to Bloomberg, on Wednesday morning Germany will sell 10-year bonds with a zero coupon for the first time, as a rally in fixed-income securities pushes investors to forgo annual interest payments in order to hold the safest assets.

Madison— Faced with delays and inflation over the past five years, four major state highway projects — including a Madison artery — have accumulated overruns in excess of $700 million. While some of these increases come from faulty cost estimates or unavoidable inflation, the new figures underline the obvious: Delays can be costly for Wisconsin taxpayers. When projects are paused because of financial challenges in the state's road fund, the price of materials, labor and real estate can rise. The numbers compiled by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel underline the urgency of a divisive issue for Wisconsin's Republican leaders: finding a...

In 2001 Governor Gray Davis signed SBX1 6 which authorized the sale of $5 billion in bonds to purchase electricity for California. I believe these were 15 year bonds. As a result our electricity rates were tiered and prices went way up. At the time I contacted PG&E and asked them what they were doing with the extra monies. The answer.....we send it to the state to pay back the bonds. The 15 years is now up and our rates are the same. Nothing has changed. I've contacted news people and asked them to look into it...silence. I called the...

Five major banks and four traders were sued on Wednesday in a private U.S. lawsuit claiming they conspired to rig prices worldwide in a more than $9 trillion market for bonds issued by government-linked organizations and agencies. Bank of America Corp (BAC.N), Credit Agricole SA (CAGR.PA), Credit Suisse Group AG (CSGN.S), Deutsche Bank AG (DBKGn.DE) and Nomura Holdings Inc (8604.T) were accused of secretly agreeing to widen the "bid-ask" spreads they quoted customers of supranational, sub-sovereign and agency (SSA) bonds. The lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court by the Boston Retirement System said the collusion dates to at least 2005,...

Update: PR Governor Padilla has spoken... -PUERTO RICO GOVERNOR SAYS WON'T PAY DEBT TOMORROW -PUERTO RICO GOVERNOR SAYS ISLAND WON'T PAY DEBT MONDAY -PUERTO RICO GOVERNOR: GOVERNMENT SIGNED MORATORIUM BILL YESTERDAY -PUERTO RICO NEEDS DEAL W/ CREDITORS AND/OR CONGRESS: GARCIA And of course, demands a bailout... -PUERTO RICO GOVERNOR CALLS ON U.S. CONGRESS, PAUL RYAN FOR HELP And then threatens... -CRISIS WILL GET WORSE IF U.S. CONGRESS DOESN'T HELP: GARCIA -PUERTO RICO GOVERNOR CONCLUDES REMARKS TO COMMONWEALTH A default on the $422 million due today is "virtually certain," S&P Global Ratings said April 11.

Legislation moving through the state House and Senate would require that environmental groups using the legal system to object to road construction provide a sound basis for their claim before those projects are halted. Lawmakers supporting the bill, which includes almost all of the Horry County House delegation, say the legislation is needed to prevent the process from being abused to easily block road projects, including International Drive. “I started talking to folks on the coast, and they told me how any individual can just file an automatic stay against a project to slow it down for whatever reason,” said...

RIYADH—Saudi Arabia, crimped by low crude prices, approved Monday a long-term blueprint for the kingdom’s economic transformation aimed at reducing its dependence on oil. The multiyear plan, dubbed “Saudi Vision 2030,” was approved by the cabinet, according to Saudi Arabia’s monarch, King Salman. The Saudi cabinet, in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency, said the government’s economic council would be in charge of overseeing the vision’s implementation. Saudi officials later Monday were to present a broad overview of the country’s most extensive economic shake-up in decades. The steep drop in oil prices has given new urgency to...

Fitch Ratings downgraded the City of Chicago’s credit rating to just one step above “junk bonds” on March 28.

Jeffrey Gundlach, the widely followed investor who runs DoubleLine Capital, foresees a “global growth scare” between now and the end of the summer, triggered by a presidential nomination of Donald Trump. “That is where I see the vulnerabilities,” Gundlach said in a telephone interview on Monday. Trump’s protectionist policies could mean negative global growth, Gundlach warned. “As he gets the nomination, the markets and investors are going to worry about it more. You will see a downgrading of global growth based on geopolitical risks. You must factor this into your risk-management.”

In a bid to raise cash, foreign central banks and government institutions sold $57.2 billion of U.S. Treasury debt and other notes in January, according to figures released on Tuesday. That is up from $48 billion in December and the highest monthly tally on record going back to 1978. It's part of a broader trend that gathered steam last year when central banks sold a record $225 billion of U.S. debt. "Foreigners have no longer been our BFF when it comes to buying U.S. Treasuries," Peter Boockvar, chief market analyst at The Lindsey Group, wrote in a client note. So...

China aims to lay off 5 to 6 million state workers over the next two to three years as part of efforts to curb industrial overcapacity and pollution. The move is being seen as Beijing's boldest retrenchment program in almost two decades. China's leadership, obsessed with maintaining stability and making sure redundancies do not lead to unrest, will spend nearly 150 billion yuan ($23 billion) to cover layoffs in just the coal and steel sectors in the next 2-3 years. [...] The hugely inefficient state sector employed around 37 million people in 2013, and accounts for about 40 percent of...

"Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice shame on me." That is a cliché that investors should keep in mind if they are considering buying into General Motors' latest debt offering. In fact, holders of GM common stock should also assess the growing similarity that New GM has with the bankrupted Old GM. GM announced last week that it will be offering an estimated $2 billion of unsecured debt to help prop up underfunded pensions with additional proceeds used for general business purposes. The move follows a contradictory continuing dialogue that proclaims the company is so cash...

It’s not contained. There are over $1.8 trillion of US junk bonds outstanding. It’s the lifeblood of over-indebted corporate America. When yields began to soar over a year ago, and liquidity began to dry up at the bottom of the scale, it was “contained.” Yet contagion has spread from energy, metals, and mining to other industries and up the scale. According to UBS, about $1 trillion of these junk bonds are now “stressed” or “distressed.” And the entire corporate bond market, which is far larger than the stock market, is getting antsy. The average yield of CCC or lower-rated junk...