Free Republic

When Chicago issued half a billion dollars in new bonds late last year, some investors balked, though the offering was designed to protect them by guaranteeing that they would be paid with tax revenues that Illinois sends to its biggest city. “It’s an untested model,” the research head at Gurtin, a municipal bond firm, said of the offering—Chicago’s first under a new state law. Ominously, he worried that if Chicago defaults, it was unclear how much protection holders of the new debt would really get. Even as Chicago grapples with nightmarish violent crime, the city faces imposing fiscal challenges. The...

Whether the nation’s $1.5 trillion student-debt problem represents a crisis is a matter of debate among policy makers and experts. But ask regular voters what they think and the answer seems pretty clear. More than half of Republicans, 67% of Independents and 71% of Democrats agree that student debt is a crisis, according to a recent poll of 1,000 voters conducted by Lake Research Partners and Chesapeake Beach Consulting on behalf of Americans for Financial Reform and the Center for Responsible Lending, two consumer advocacy organizations. “It’s pretty clear that regardless of political orientation, people see it not just as...

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s financial team is considering borrowing billions of dollars to pour into Chicago’s ailing pension funds — a move they contend could save future taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars but experts say comes with risk. The idea is to issue bonds at relatively low interest rates and use the money to reduce the city’s $28 billion in pension debt. The pension funds would invest the bond proceeds and ideally earn returns that outpace the interest the city would have to pay on the bond debt. Issuing so-called pension obligation bonds would be a first for Chicago, which...

Having grown up in New Jersey, you understand that Democrats are a tax and spend party and even liberals in the state understand it. The Garden State is a case study in mass exodus; it’s just too expensive to live there anymore. Are there signs that the Democrats get it? Maybe—the heavily Democratic legislature in Trenton had to tell Governor Phil Murphy that his tax increase agenda was more or less not going to happen. Taxes still went up, but it was not the insane proposal the governor’s office had pushed. Still, I doubt Demorats in these states will find...

Believe it or not, a recent study conducted by Research Now on behalf of Discover shows that young people are more in touch with their credit score than any other generation in the United States. While more than half of the population of consumers in the US — 61%, to be exact — reported that they are actively trying to improve their credit score, that percentage is concentrated in the younger generations. The highest concentration of those taking steps toward improving their credit score lies in the subset of Gen Z go-getters between the ages of 18 and 21, 87%...

As Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin prepares to unveil plans to finance the surging U.S. budget deficit, his choices are seen as key to the fate of the yield curve, which is drawing scrutiny because of its march toward inversion. The nation’s debt managers are set to release a funding program for the next three months on Aug. 1, and bond dealers say it’s a given that coupon-bearing issuance will rise for the third straight quarter. Some project Treasury will extend the sector it leans on to finance budget shortfalls out to the five-year maturity. Either way, the announcement could add...

Stacey Abrams is running for governor in Georgia. She would be the first black woman to be elected governor of a state in American history if she were to win the election. But she faces some major roadblocks. The office of governor was staunchly Democratic in Georgia until Sonny Perdue was elected in 2002. He was reelected in 2006 and was succeeded by another Republican, Gov. Nathan Deal, in 2010. Abrams wrote an op-ed for Fortune in April, in which she argued her personal debt shouldn’t disqualify her from running for governor. She owes more than $227,000 in credit card...

The Trump administration announced Tuesday that it will grant up to $12 billion in emergency aid to farmers hurt by retaliatory tariffs in the ongoing trade fight with China and other American trading partners. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue said that the plan, which will provide direct assistance and other temporary relief for farmers through the USDA’s commodity program, is meant as a stopgap to give Trump time to negotiate a long-term policy with China, the European Union and others. The plan was announced as Trump spoke at the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention in Kansas City, where he...

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) tells @burgessev and me outside GOP lunch that $12 billion in trade assistance to farmers from Trump administration "this is becoming more and more like a Soviet-type of economy here" with "commissars" sprinkling around benefits.

When pork prices collapsed amid a global trade war during the Great Depression, the Roosevelt Administration in 1933 had an idea—slaughter six million piglets. Put a floor under prices by destroying supply. It didn’t work. Now the Trump Administration may try its own version of Depressionomics by using the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) to support crop prices walloped by the Trump tariffs: Hurt farmers and then put them on the government dole. How about not hurting them in the first place? That’s the question as Mr. Trump escalates his trade war, on Wednesday proposing 10% tariffs on $200 billion in...

WASHINGTON — The government announced a $12 billion plan Tuesday to assist farmers who have been hurt by President Donald Trump's trade disputes with China and other trading partners. The plan focuses on Midwest soybean producers and others targeted by retaliatory measures. The Agriculture Department said the proposal would include direct assistance for farmers, purchases of excess crops and trade promotion activities aimed at building new export markets. Officials said the plan would not require congressional approval and would come through the Commodity Credit Corporation, a wing of the department that addresses agricultural prices. "This is a short-term solution that...

The U.S. Agriculture Department on Tuesday plans to announce a $12 billion package of emergency aid for farmers caught in the midst of President Trump’s escalating trade war, two people briefed on the plan said, the latest sign that growing tensions between the United States and other countries will not end soon. Trump ordered Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to prepare a range of options several months ago, amid complaints from farmers that their products faced retaliatory tariffs from China and other countries. The new package of government assistance funds will be announced Tuesday and is expected to go into effect...

Amazon has introduced a new program that makes it a little more easier to buy gaming PCs and PC components. While the price is technically the same, the burden is spread out across several months at no penalty to the buyer. Amazon now has a monthly payment system for big ticket items that shifts payments across five months instead of all at once. For instance, there's now the option to purchase a $2,000 PC with five monthly payments of $400 rather than forking over two grand at the time of sale. The applicable categories for this new program are: Laptops,...

The global debt level is reaching shocking new heights. The Institute of International Finance recently estimated the current total world debt is roughly $247 trillion—a truly unprecedented figure.But as frightening as the global debt has become because of the dangers it poses to the world’s economic stability, Americans should be far more terrified of what this problem might mean for them, especially if the globe endures another major financial collapse before the United States can get its fiscal house back in order. Put simply, America is on the verge of experiencing an absolutely catastrophic period of economic change, and it’s...

PODGORICA (Reuters) - Perched atop massive cement pillars that tower above Montenegro’s picturesque Moraca river canyon, scores of Chinese workers are building a state-of-the-art highway through some of the roughest terrain in southern Europe. The government has described the 165 km (103 mile) highway, with its imposing bridges and deep-cut tunnels, as the construction of the century and a pathway to the modern world. It is designed to link the port of Bar on Montenegro’s Adriatic coast to landlocked neighbor Serbia. But once the first, challenging 41 km stretch through mountains north of the capital is completed, the government faces...

High-profile businessman Zhou Jiancan was last seen at the five-star Shangyu International Hotel on January 30, where he had been countless times before to host conferences and entertain clients in the small city in eastern China. But on that afternoon, the 55-year-old head of private firm Zhejiang Jindun Holding Group was alone and climbed to a great enough height in the 30-storey building to leap to his death, according to a police report. Zhou was the embodiment of wealth and success in Shangyu and just days before had been in talks with people from Bangladesh about a multibillion-dollar project to...

NEW YORK CITY—Paul J. Massey Jr. and his new company, Building by Building, Block by Block (B6) founded with former colleagues Neil Heilberg and Michael Wlody, are looking to hire 50 brokers. They’ve already recruited an experienced management team of 20 people. Having officially launched on July 1 in temporary space at 275 Madison Ave., B6 plans to open permanent offices in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and New Jersey—all within its first year. Similar to Massey Knakal, the firm Massey originally started with Bob Knakal in 1988, which Cushman & Wakefield acquired in 2014 for $100 million, B6 will use a...

Not so long ago, student debt was mostly the responsibility of students. That is, you paid for college with loans and then paid off those loans with the proceeds of the good job you got with an advanced education. These days it’s a little different. The cost of higher education is soaring, the jobs available to college grads don’t pay as much, relatively speaking, as they used to, and the size of loans available to students – though huge – don’t cover the full cost of many degrees. One might expect these changes to lead more students to work for...

The federal government collected a record $1,305,490,000,000 in individual income taxes through the first nine months of fiscal 2018 (October 2017 through June 2018), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement released today. Despite the record individual income tax collections, the federal government still ran a deficit of $607,099,000,000 over those same nine months, according to the Treasury statement. The approximately $1,305,490,000,000 in individual income taxes that the Treasury collected in October through June of this fiscal year was $71,815,310,000 more (in constant June 2018 dollars) than the $1,233,674,690,000 (in constant June 2018 dollars) in individual income taxes that the Treasury...

I’m pretty sure I know how California will fail. I don’t know exactly when it will happen, but after the result in the Democratic primary in New York’s 14th Congressional District two weeks ago, the Golden State’s rendezvous with fiscal perdition is going to happen sooner than we think. Let’s talk about the “how.” California’s foundering won’t be precipitated by a single catastrophic event. Apart from the threatened CalExit, voter initiatives to partition the state, or the Big One shaking us into the Pacific, it won’t be the equivalent of a sudden, unexpected stroke on a random Tuesday that brings...