Totaling the unsustainable tax increases and windfall revenue during Pritzker Administration – Wirepoints
May 26, 2026
23 Comments
With $162 billion more from taxpayers, couldn’t you deliver a few bond upgrades, too
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A largely unasked question is becoming glaring: Is Illinois doing all it should to use artificial intelligence to make government cost less and work better? So far, the evidence says no.
I’d take the City Council argument much more seriously if they all played dress up and pranced around as frogs. Just sayin..
There are so many sad things about the way Chicago is run and what it has become. It certainly did not have to be this way. Thousands of stupid, inept, corrupt decisions without any stewardship or responsibility made over decades have led this City to this point, even after obligating tax payers from around the state to pay for the corruption…the people running the City continue to run it into the ground. I believe they know it will fail, but they believe the Federal government will bail them out…so they just don’t care, much like the state legislature. Today, there… Read more »
“ I believe they know it will fail, but they believe the Federal government will bail them out”
That’s what I believe as I commented below. Huge miscalculation on the political classes part.
At this point does it really matter? It’s over. The city is finished. If it collapses now it will take a lifetime before any significant rebound and it may not happen at all. Credit downgrade? What a laugh. That’s like saying the Titanic is unseaworthy after it hit the iceberg.
The leeches that elected the captains as well as the entire crew should be made to go down with the ship. They should not be allowed to infect the rest of the country with their disease.
Chicago is going to dead beat its debt. The rich are fleeing Chicago leaving nothing but the poor working class and they are tapped out.
Taxistan getting closer to the black hole event horizon.
Soon there will be no escape from bankruptcy!!
It seems only yesterday when Little Ralphie Martire was in the afterglow of his love letters to Mayor Cliff Notes and JB the Hutt. Was their financial stewardship not praiseworthy? Crain’s has cheerlead for Illinois political scoundrels and their rampant spending for years. How dare they turn on their friends and pals. Is everything not just ducky in Mayor Notes’ Chicago as Crain’s has reported previously? The blind-as-a-bat credit agencies propped up Chicago’s junk bonds for years while the underwriters and institutional investors sold these instruments to chumbolones who still believed both the rating agencies and the Useless Chicago Media.… Read more »
The immutable laws of economics. Bessent won’t be digitizing (printing money) to bail out states/cities.
Let’s see…the city only made half the payment it should have to retirement funds and stills owes it like 260 million. It had to borrow over 100 million for the back pay owed to fire fighters. It owes well over 100 million in overtime to police officers that it does not want to pay and it just lost a court decision of traffic tickets that will cost over 100 million to pay. Downton building real estate values continue to decline which mean the shortfall will have to be made up by increasing real estate taxes on family homes. If there… Read more »
If the city showed any evidence of serious spending cuts, that would set well with ratings agencies. Gimmicky, and perhaps unconstitutional, tax increases are not.
Thanks for nothing, rating agencies. Chicago bond values had already tanked. In January alone, the trading prices for Chicago bonds dropped ten percent. https://fixedincome.fidelity.com/ftgw/fi/FINewsArticle?id=202601271316SM______BNDBUYER_0000019b-ffea-db90-a7bb-ffee372e0000_110.1
Well said, how long will it take for Chicago to be frozen out of the credit/bond markets
While very true, I however do not understand the Thanks for nothing.
Would we expect the rating agencies to do anything different, seems like a honest assessment to me, but I’m not a financial wizard like the economics Nobel prize winner that told Chicago to stop digging and file bankruptcy ASAP!
The whole point of credit ratings is to provide prior warnings about losses that could result from deteriorating credit. If Mr. Market has already whacked you, it’s too late.
Or is it to provide cover so the institutional investors can get out, leaving the chumbolones holding the bag?