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.
Why the concern now? They never have before. Illinois is doomed, the pension time bomb is exploding. All the money in the world is not enough to cover the increasing liability. PPF and the likes of them have gotten their wish, that is to destroy the economic lives of everyone but themselves.