Will Chicago Follow Detroit in Bankruptcy?

WND ^ | 08/09/2013 | Jerome Corsi

[SeekAndFind]

NEW YORK – Chicago, America’s third largest city, could follow Detroit into bankruptcy, warned Mayor Rahm Emanuel in the city’s “Annual Financial Analysis 2013” released last week.

“Until we pass meaningful pension reforms in Springfield, the outlook for future years is unsustainable,” Emanuel concluded bluntly, anticipating a current budget crisis that could develop into a full-fledged budget meltdown within the next four years.

Emanuel noted that Chicago’s current budget deficit of $338.7 million is expected to grow to $1.6 billion by 2016, due largely “to ballooning obligations under current pension legislation.”

Compounding the fact that pensions for public employees are less than 40 percent funded, a decline in business activity during several years of prolonged economic downturn and an exodus of higher income residents from the city have resulted until recently in a dramatic decline in Chicago’s tax revenue.

While Chicago has attempted to cut back on city services, including public school employment and police and firefighters, the city’s operating expenses are plagued by extremely high salaries, with 2,400 municipal employees earning six-figure salaries annually.

Why are most of America’s big cities strongly liberal, while virtually the rest of the country leans conservative? Find out in this jaw-dropping WND special report, “URBAN WARFARE: How the left has destroyed America’s greatest cities.”

Meanwhile, the crisis of gun violence in Chicago, despite the city’s tough gun control regulations, prompted members of Congress from the city to demand last month that the National Guard be called in to stop the “mayhem.”

What is looming in Chicago and Detroit is a crisis of increased Democratic Party-controlled government spending and an era of union-controlled public employment that is causing Democrats to soul-search for solutions that do not involve raising taxes

[cripplecreek]

They’re already following Detroit whether they want to admit it or not. Just this morning someone showed me a story about Chicago cops not bothering to show up for 911 calls.

[RC one]

The zombie apocalypse, is it making sense yet?

[House Atreides]

I think that Chicago has reached a “tipping point”. If I was a middle-class Chicago resident homeowner, I’d be looking at putting my house on the market and moving to the outer suburbs. I’d want to do it before the housing market in the city begin to decline neighborhood by neighborhood.

[C210N]

Reason número UNO for 0’care:

It can infuse hundreds of million$ into Chicargo obligations by way of public health plans

Backdoor wealth redistribution as intended

[xp38]

Titanic went down in 1912, Britannic went down in 1916 after hitting a mine and the Olympic was scrapped in 1935. Olympic was the only known civilian vessal to destroy an enemy sub by ramming it.

[Eagle of Liberty]

The zombie apocalypse, is it making sense yet?

It does when you equate the word "zombie" with "brain dead liberal".

[cripplecreek]

Yup. People are always amazed that the wealthiest counties in Michigan are those surrounding Detroit. The people fled to cheaper and safer places like Oakland then all the little businesses followed. Big companies like Ernst & Young, JP Morgan, Quicken Loans, and Compuware are doing just fine and even growing in Detroit but aren’t enough to support an entire city.

The big guys can afford to stay but what really kills a city is the loss of thousands of little businesses and homeowners.

[volunbeer]

@ Post 5

You are wise. The unfunded union pension liabilities provided the real catalyst for Obamacare. The damage, new government union jobs, and bloat of entitlements/growth of government were just a bonus.