-- 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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And so it begins. A bull market for bonds began in 1981. Since then, owning bonds was a capital gains money machine. Bonds, like stocks, are intangible assets. The market for intangible assets does not conform to Econ 101 supply/demand price models; as prices rise (in a bull market), the quantity demanded rises also. This dynamic has run for 38 straight years, resulting in a veritable OCEAN of debt being filled (the on-budget $22 trillion national debt is a snowflake on the tip of the worldwide iceberg of IOU’s.) We LONG AGO passed the point where debts (promises of future… Read more »