-- 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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>>“It’s really unbelievable that they weren’t prepared for this and to my knowledge they haven’t done anything to rectify it either.”<<
But Mark, in my cynicism, I would argue that…
‘They’ were indeed ‘ready for this’…
Chances to pilfer billions of $ do not come around very often…
And why fix it, when there are billions more to steal…
At the state level, Joey, you may be right. But it’s the national level the bothers me. What the hell is the purpose of the Dept. of Homeland Security if not to plan for an emergency like this? And one element of any national disaster should be a plan on the shelf ready to go that puts money into people’s pockets when the economy largely shuts down as it did in spring 2000. Yet the federal government and the states had no such plan and just made it up as they went along. It was a national security failure.