The pension battle in Chicago and Illinois will be fueled by Moody’s latest announcement: Moody’s Investors Service downgraded Chicago’s credit rating, citing the city’s unfunded pension liabilities. The agency announced Tuesday it was lowering the rating on $8.3 billion in debt to Baa1, from A3, putting it only three notches above junk status. Moody’s gave Chicago a negative…
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Are unions necessary?
Friday reading: Are unions necessary? – latimes.com. Feb 27, 2014. Michael Hiltzik comments on the ongoing debate between Evan Soltas (Bloomberg) and Michael Wasser (Jobs with Justice), spurred in part by the interference of North Carolina legislators with the union election at Volkswagen’s plant there. You can read more of the exchange here. Aside from…
To Pay for Infrastructure Repairs, Obama Seeks Tax Changes
ST. PAUL, Minn. — Caught between a gridlocked Congress and a Highway Trust Fund that will soon be broke, President Obama on Wednesday urged lawmakers to overhaul corporate and business taxes to pay for repairing and replacing the nation’s aging roads, rails, bridges and tunnels. … New legislation to pay for transportation projects is an urgent priority for both…
Woops!
The New York Times gets transcripts of conversations between the economists responsible for guiding the U.S. economy past the financial crisis, and failing. The hundreds of pages of transcripts, based on recordings made at the time, reveal the ignorance of Fed officials about economic conditions during the climactic months of the financial crisis. Officials repeatedly…
Detroit Ruin, quantified
So many articles (and a dissertation) to write about Detroit, so little time. Meanwhile, the New York Times’ Monica Davey keeps on writing about the struggling city, with a piece today about “Detroit Ruin.” The city is building a database, with pictures, of Detroit’s abandoned properties. Everyone here has long known that Detroit is plagued by…