IBD –Cities: The problem with socialism, Margaret Thatcher once noted, is you eventually run out of other people’s money. In progressive Chicago, that’s hit home as Moody’s has cut its credit rating to two grades above “junk.”
Chicago’s finances are staggering under the weight of an unfunded pension liability that Moody’s Investors Service has estimated at $32 billion, eight times the city’s operating revenue.
Chicago has a $300 million structural deficit. And Illinois law requires the city to up its 2016 contributions to its police and fire pension funds by $550 million.
“This is an unfortunate wake-up call for anyone still asleep over the fiscal cliff facing the city of Chicago,” said Laurence Msall, president of the Chicago-based government finance watchdog, the Civic Federation.
The federal government is in much the same situation, but it can create fiat billions out of thin air while states and large cities cannot.
TIFs
I’m tired of the “close to the end” crap. Shut down the city already. Get on with the garage sales. If Chicago was a business, they’d be dissolved, and the owners would be under the jail.
It won’t get any better. Emmanuel is in a Democrat run-off with Chuy Garcia, who is in the pocket of the Chicago teacher’s union. The Chicago teacher’s union just assumes that someone, somewhere will find the money to pay their demands, and they frankly don’t care about the city’s fiscal problems.
To give Rahm Emmanuel some credit, he did take some steps to trim Chicago’s deficit and be at least a little more prudent. However, Garcia is far more progressive than Emmanuel, and both will likely have to once again promise more than they can deliver. The rest of Illinois should brace themselves for the probability that they will have to pay for Chicago’s idiocy.
“Remember…The Dead Do Vote…1/2 Quote Unquote.”
@Tracy, that made me LOL.
@MJA
‘Under the jail’.
Good one! I haven’t heard that before.