Wirepoints President Ted Dabrowski appeared on WQAD on ABC 8 in Moline. He was on to talk about why the proposed issuance of bonds to pay for East Moline’s pension shortfall is bad for residents.
“The government wants to borrow a whole bunch of money for cheap, because rates are really low right now,” Dabrowski said. “If they do better with their investments, that’s good for the pension funds. But if they lose out, it’s the taxpayers who are on the hook. It’s high risk for sure.”
“We shouldn’t borrow to get out of a debt problem,” Dabrowski added.
You can read the entire article from WQAD here.
Wirepoints pieces on pension obligation bonds:
- Politicians’ next pension “fix”: Gambling with your money
- Pension Obligation Bonds Are Like Big, Fat, Dangerous Margin Loans For Stock
- Emanuel’s misleading pension bond presentation to Chicago aldermen
- Chicago CFO’s Stupendously Bad Timing On Her Last Pension Obligation Bond
- Emanuel’s real motivations for Chicago’s $10 billion pension bond plan
With $162 billion more from taxpayers, couldn’t you deliver a few bond upgrades, too
Audio and summary 
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.
First of all, Pensions offered by any municipal body are a condition of employment on the employer. None have stopped offering these pensions. Secondly the pension costs are always going to fall on the taxpayers even with some contribution by the employee. People seem to forget that Pensioners in Illinois are also taxpayers. One could argue that without pensioners Illinois would be in an even steeper decline. When I see a city like Chicago stop offering pensions to new hires , I will then consider that these politicians are serious about trying to solve the problem.
What happens to the working government employee?
residents a.k.a. taxpayers are inconsequential as long as they act like sheep or ostriches
Maybe the state should issue its own currency. ILLI-Coin. Buy the coin and become ill.
Good luck trying to find investments with 7% dividends. The only one I can think of is ExxonMobil. Even high yield bonds don’t do that well.
Borrowing money to invest in the stock market is stupid.