CHICAGO, IL – Due
to rising crime costs and an ever increasing pension liability, putting the City
of Chicago at major risk, rating agency Moody’s decided to downgrade the city’s
municipal bonds to “Newark,” one of the lowest ratings out there. “There are
some beautiful parts of the city, I guess, but Chicago already has a budget
deficit of over $300 million,” analyst Rachel Merelman explains. “We considered
going so far as downgrading them to ‘Phoenix’ or ‘Las Vegas,’ but we thought
that was too drastic. Downgrading to ‘Newark’ sends a nice warning signal that
Chicago needs to pull itself together.” Newark mayor Cory Booker called Chicago
mayor Rahm Emanuel to welcome him to what he calls the “Rock Bottom Club” or
RBC, which includes among others Edwin M. Lee of Oakland and Francis
Slay of St. Louis. The RBC meets every month to discuss best practices
in blaming their predicament on things outside of their control. Moody’s did
say that, while highly unlikely, if the City of Chicago loses its main source
of GDP, has half of its population leave, and generally loses all hope of
recovery, the rating agency is willing to downgrade the city to “Detroit.”
 |
| Chicago's new credit rating |
No comments:
Post a Comment