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Summary and audio linked here.
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.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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So, when does the confidence game end for the bond market? I keep reading this, been reading it for over a decade now. What was Detroit’s last straw? What is ours? The next downturn surely will do it, but the math is already obvious. If you don’t get it now, why would you even “get it” then?
BONDFIRE. That’s what is coming. Today the only people showing up to buy bonds are the Pollyanna-like pension managers who are desperate for yield (and figure that when this turns into a firestorm…a huge BONDFIRE…they’ll be safely retired or too wealthy to care about unemployment.) But when the mood turns down and it becomes FASHIONABLE to ask the hard questions, bond markets will empty of buyers, prices will decline and then, when everyone realizes that the IOU’s they already hold cannot be sold at anything near today’s prices, they’ll panic. Prices will collapse (AKA rates will skyrocket) and the WEALTH… Read more »
Ok, good stuff, but WHEN Astonished?
Best guess, please.
Ha, ha, ha. When? In 1995. Then in 1998. Then in 2000. Then in 2007. I’m the last person to ask. The point is that as long as the SYSTEM rewards borrowers (with T-bill yields at 1.5% or less, 30-year T-bonds at 3% or less and deadbeat borrowers like Chicago and IL able to float their (toilet) paper at all) this farce will continue. It’s all about bonds. Stocks and other asset markets can rise or fall by half or more, but until debt prices enter a bear market, all paths are higher. The last bear market for debt ended… Read more »