-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
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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You know it’s hard times when prestigious and storied universities with $10,000,000,000 endowments are feeling the pain.
And considering how many students this year will be taking gap years, its going to be terrible.
Tenure is another of these “contract [or property] rights” that has outlived its utility although many elder faculty clog the arteries of a place like Northwestern. It’s not a state school so the familiar “impairment of contract” rules may not preclude some salutary angioplasty. Will these dons want to mix with scruffy lawyers and [elected] judges and juries to protect their sinecures? I’m thinking there might be some fairly easy pickings out there in the suburbs where the green grass is tended by others and the humid air cracks with virtue signals.