Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
When dumps like Kankakee and Carbondale are up double digits it likely means that outside investors have been priced out of larger market. Downstate markets are scraping the bottom of the barrel as rentiers and vultures looks for untapped and underinflated real estate markets. We are witnessing, in real time, inflation rear its ugly head into every corner of the economy, including the single family home market in small towns where the only way to collect rent is to show up at the tenants door on the first of the month and demand it in cash.