The financial world has been reeling from a series of worldwide financial crashes. This week, high-taxing, high-regulating Greece became the world’s first “first-world” country to default on an IMF loan. On Sunday, the governor of Puerto Rico announced that his Island State’s debts are unpayable. On Monday, the U.S. Dow plummeted 350 points.
Also this week, the State of Illinois–considered America’s Greece by the Economist Magazine–is approaching default on its high pension obligations. Illinois, like California and New York, lavishes public so-called workers with extravagant pension, medical and retirement packages. Illinois State retirees have often been seen in Las Vegas casinos alongside sheiks and oil barons at high-stakes craps and blackjack tables.
According to the Chicago Sun-Times, “One day after using borrowed money and savings generated by 1,400 layoffs to make a $634 million payment to the teachers pension fund, [Chicago] Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration is asking the pension fund for a five-month, $500 million loan.”
Socialist-oriented politicians at both the Illinois State and Chicago City level are shuffling funds back and forth to attempt to meet financial-payment deadlines. The hard-hit taxpayers of Illinois are being made to shoulder ever-higher burdens.
