What A Century Of Democrat Governance Gets You

Chicago’s mountain of debt has been downgraded to “Junk”:

“Whether or not the current statutes that govern Chicago’s pension plans stand, we expect the costs of servicing Chicago’s unfunded liabilities will grow, placing significant strain on the city’s financial operations absent commensurate growth in revenue and/or reductions in other expenditures,” the agency said in a release.

The downgrade affected $8.9 billion of general obligation, sales, and motor fuel tax debt, according to Moody’s.

The firm said its downgrades could trigger up to $2.2 billion in accelerated payments on Chicago debt.

Who knew – trying to run a spending/”service”-heavy regime based on systematically transferring money from producers to consumers (with a healthy gratuity for the political class in between) is no way to run a government?

Some of us did, anyway.

How long ’til Saint Paul, Duluth and Minneapolis follow suit?

Posted

May 13, 2015

Democrat Party, The Racket

Mitch Berg

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7 responses to “What A Century Of Democrat Governance Gets You”

nerdbert

May 13, 2015

D*mn, that’s gonna be expensive.

Funny, but the Sun-Times came out with the usual solution: they’re saying the only way forward is to raise property taxes and open a casino. But what’s the attraction that will keep folks in Chicago? The city was founded by a bunch of NYC types who decided that while they liked the corruption and crime, it just wasn’t cold enough.
nerdbert

May 13, 2015

While my other comment awaits moderation, may I point out that Zero Hedge has their usual bombastic analysis of the situation? While they’re a bit doom-and-gloom, they do raise some valid points about the double-step downgrade triggering an immediate $2.2B call on some of Chicago’s debts.

To me, the more interesting statistic is what solid-blue governance by the city of Chicago has done to the rest of the state, where the state employees’ retirement system is funded to less than 37%. And may I point out that that’s under the new, very forgiving funding formula that passed after the 2008 financial implosion that Democrats hoped would hide just how dire the situation was for states?

So Chicago is in pretty dire straights. But at least there’s a path out for bankruptcy for them — there’s no path out using bankruptcy for Illinois.
bikebubba

May 13, 2015

Not quite a century of Democrat governance in Chicago. Bill Thompson was Mayor of the city until 1931. So about 85 years. :^)

Now given that the Republicans back then were often “progressive” and corrupt just like today’s Democrats, we would be able to say that Chicago is the “lucky beneficiary” of over a century of progressive, corrupt governance.
Margaret Martin

May 13, 2015

Minneapolis got the State to help it ReFi all of it’s pension debt. It was a bipartisan deal when the Republicans had both houses of the legislature and Dayton and RT were in charge. They are the most flush of any of the first class cities with pensions and so all they need to worry about is if they can make the payments. Duluth is another story. They did get their teachers pension bailed out and merged into the State Teachers Pension under the DFL last session but they are in danger of not making the payments for their current workers and whatever they promised to do for the TRA merger. Bankruptcy may be in their future. St. Paul is still in denial that they have any sort of problem. They had a chance to go in with Duluth to the State Pension and they rejected it.
Chuck

May 13, 2015

Liberal Democrat Superior Wisconsin had many of the same issues about 10 years ago. Local power structure (Superior Democrats) proposed large tax increases. A local small businessman, a Republican, said he could run things better. He got elected, balanced the budget without a tax increase. Left the city in great shape.
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May 14, 2015

[…] Wisdom: Dem Rep Hank Johnson Threatens Violence Over Any Move to Limit Government Shot In The Dark: What A Century Of Democrat Governance Gets You STUMP: Chicago Bonds – Welcome To Junkville, Population – You The Gateway Pundit: […]
TheFedSucks

May 14, 2015

Name one government actuarial system that is sound. You can’t.

Goverment employee unions are a scam.