A European bank that received the most Federal Reserve discount window help during the financial crisis also took $381 billion in aid from its home countries and owned subsidiaries implicated in bid-rigging that prosecutors say defrauded U.S. taxpayers.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said some municipalities will need to renegotiate debt and a hundred may not “make it.”
Municipal-bond issuance is on pace for its lowest quarter in at least 11 years following a rush of borrowing late last year and as government borrowers struggle to get their budgets in order.
A consulting firm founded by economist Nouriel Roubini said there could be close to $100 billion of municipal-bond defaults over the next five years as state and local government-debt problems damp the U.S. economic recovery.
By Fred Sheehan
Meredith Whitney has kicked up a storm with her 600-page, municipal-bond report. She was one of the first analysts on Wall Street who warned the banks were going to topple well before they toppled. (Standard & Poor's downgraded Bear Stearns three notches - to BBB - on March 14, 2008, two days before J.P. Morgan acquired Bear's carcass.) Whitney told 60 Minutes on December 19, 2010: "You could see...50 to 100 sizable [municipal] defaults.... This will amount to hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of defaults." The municipal bond CABAL (issuers, fund managers, analysts, the municipalities) denounced Whitney and her predictions.
Our country is bankrupt. It’s not bankrupt in 30 years or five years. It’s bankrupt today.
For folks tired of milquetoast consensus predictions, there's a ton of red meat in this weeken's Barron's interview with star DoubleLine bond manager Jeff Gundlach.
The first time Illinois tried to bail out its teetering pension fund by borrowing billions of dollars, it ended in disaster.
Cash-strapped US states and cities face the prospect of downgrades after Fitch Ratings changed the way it analyses their burgeoning pension bills.
Bell's assistant city administrator and the city's then-candidate for police chief referred to themselves as “pigs” in an e-mail exchange as they discussed the exorbitant salary being offered the lawman, documents released in court Monday show.-Ah, the City of Bell is back in the news. Gotta love 'em.
