Chicago remains in critical fiscal shape and its newest ‘social’ bonds won’t help – Mark Glennon on with Jeanne Ives of Breakthrough Ideas

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Aaron
3 years ago

The dire financial condition of Chicago is how the WEF and corporate elites eventually own Chicago. 15 minute city (climate lockdown) is Chicago’s future. Chicago is the US home of this treasonous group of globalists. You will own nothing, not even your government. Wake up Illinois!

Last edited 3 years ago by Aaron
Poor Taxpayer
3 years ago

Ken Griffen will buy the bonds, fat chance. The governor will go on a diet first.
Citadel’s $16 Billion Gain In 2022 Makes Ken Griffin’s Firm The Top-Earning Hedge Fund Ever. Just one more of Illinois success stories. Illinois kills another golden goose.

George`s Wooden Teeth
3 years ago

Chicago is far from broke 1.22 Billion in TIF funds sorry theres plenty of money its not being spend correctly

Admin
3 years ago

Fair point as far as it goes, though $1.22 billion is a very small number compared to the size of the problem.

Aaron
3 years ago

Chicago will squander the TIF money and you know it.

willowglen
3 years ago
Reply to  Aaron

How does one get at the TIF money? Undoing those arrangements would cause litigation and liabilities? And once through those hoops, there is little cause to believe that the politicians would use the “freed” TIF funds to draw down pension liabilities. Concur with Aaron on this point.

Old Joe
3 years ago

I thought social bonds were marriage, progeny and family life.

Giddyap
3 years ago

Cure for Chicago is a bankruptcy — wipe out all the crooked union contracts — and have an independent trustee draw up waste/fraud/incompetence free budget

ron
3 years ago
Reply to  Giddyap

Just start with becoming a right to work state

Pensions Paid First
3 years ago
Reply to  ron

Unconstitutional.

Willowglen
3 years ago

PPF – as usual – the issue is not really a legal issue. Chicago cannot enter bankruptcy without the consent of Springfield, which simply won’t happen. There is no way the pols that run Illinois will permit acknowledgement of this kind of failure. So the question of whether federal bankruptcy law would prevail over state law with pension reform likely won’t arise. I could be wrong, but the future likely won’t be a cataclysmic crash but a very slow and miserable grind, with Illinois becoming a midwestern variant of West Virginia economically. Lots of borrowing on uncompetitive terms and a… Read more »

debtsor
3 years ago
Reply to  Willowglen

It’s complicated. The college educated upper middle class votes Democrat and they LOVE LOVE LOVE our new progressive utopia. These are rough numbers but Naperville is D+25, the entire North Shore is D+60, Schaumburg is D+30, Glenview is D+35, even Wheaton is D+15, a even the NW side of Chicago (other than a handful of areas) is D+20. Some of these college educated upper middle class voters leave, but they tend to be conservative. The larger issue is that Chicago/IL has a difficult time growing this upper middle class for many varying reasons: Recruitment is difficult for companies because 50%… Read more »

lake county
3 years ago
Reply to  debtsor

I don’t disagree with your points, Debtsor. But the bottom line is that if there is an net out-migration of, let’s say 20,000 upper middle income earners in the space of two years, that is a significant problem. Illinois is not California where huge capital gain technology events can fund quite a bit. The State needs their upper middle income class very much. Anecdotes don’t often demonstrate much, except in the small number of cases where they do. I went to college out of state, to a school ranked higher than anything else in Illinois. Ditto for a lot of… Read more »

debtsor
3 years ago
Reply to  lake county

At the end of the day, the progressive loving liberals will stay in IL as long as the job are here in IL. When those employers collectively decide – often all at or near the same time – that those jobs are better filled in Dallas or Miami, then the real pain will start, because that downward spiral will be too difficult to pull out of, and even the progressive loving liberals in Glenview voting D+35 won’t be happy being unemployed.

Pensions Paid First
3 years ago
Reply to  Willowglen

My comment was to Ron’s statement around making Illinois “right to work”. What’s the point of making suggestions to “fix” Illinois if it violates the constitution? So yes, when it comes to making Illinois RTW, it’s a legal issue no matter how you slice it. It’s like people purposely ignore the law just because they don’t like it.

Bankruptcy is a separate matter that is both a legal and a political issue.

Willowglen
3 years ago

Right to work is small potatoes compared to the enormous financial problems the State is facing. Even if magically right to work would be eliminated financial circumstances would not change.

PPF – you are a bright guy. A question my tax law professor would pose to us is whether tax increases are exogenous to productivity. What is your answer?

Poor Taxpayer
3 years ago

The Chitty of Chicago is now stealing as much money before the go bankrupt. Far too generous pensions is the root of the problem. There is a nuclear pension bomb going off right now. High Crime, High Taxes and Schmitt services is a recipe for a disaster. People are fleeing at increasing numbers leaving higher taxes for the ones that stay. It is not if this will fail, but when it will fail.

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Mark Glennon on AM560’s Morning Answer: Chicago pension buyout plan mostly shifts debt rather than eliminating it, property tax surge doubles inflation over three decades

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.

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