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Kirklareli / Turkey – Aug, 30, 2021: Lighted Sign Board with Large British Petroleum, BP Logo Placed on a poll in the highway gas station.

A Department of Transportation agency declared a regional energy emergency for four Midwestern states on Saturday after a fire at an oil refinery in Indiana forced the facility to shut down.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration made the declaration to address the need for the immediate transportation of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel for Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin.

The declaration allows the states to be exempt from certain federal regulations to manage the emergency.

It will permit motor carriers and drivers providing direct, related assistance to the impacted states not to abide by regulations setting a maximum driving time.

The declaration states that drivers are required to take a 10-hour break when moving from emergency relief efforts to normal operations if the total amount of time they engage in emergency relief efforts exceeds 14 hours. This regulation also applies if the total amount of time combined from emergency relief and normal operations exceeds 14 hours.

Reuters reported on Wednesday that BP shut down some of its units at its Whiting, Ind., refinery due to an electrical fire. The fire was extinguished, and the company said it was deciding when the affected units would restart.

There were no injuries. The refinery handles more than 430,000 barrels per day, according to Reuters.

It provides about 20 to 25 percent of the refined gas, diesel and jet fuel that the four states collectively use.

Whiting is located on Lake Michigan, near the state’s border with Illinois.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Illinois’ financial decay spreads to cities across the state

September 3, 2019

Illinois’ financial decay spreads to cities across the state

Illinois’ finances aren’t just decaying at the top, they’re falling apart everywhere. The state’s one-size-fits-all pension laws and overly generous benefits have left many cities suffocating under impossible pension debts as their populations shrink, tax burdens jump and resident incomes stagnate.

Without an amendment to the Illinois Constitution’s pension protection clause – and subsequent pension reforms – expect many cities to head toward insolvency.

The map below shows just how wide and deep the crisis is. Of the 630 downstate police and fire pension funds that reported data to the Illinois Department of Insurance in 2017, 57 percent had funded ratios lower than 60 percent. And nearly 100 funds had funded ratios below 40 percent.

What’s worse, the downstate pension decline has occurred during one of the nation’s longest-ever bull runs. If Illinois public safety pensions are doing this poorly in a great economy, imagine their struggles during an eventual downturn.

False, and true, solutions

Illinois cities – from Kankakee to Danville to Alton – need pension fixes before costs bankrupt them. And while state politicians have effectively quashed any chance for reforms now, that shouldn’t stop city officials from demanding real changes.

Real changes don’t mean pension fund consolidations or tax hikes. Consolidation may reduce administrative costs and increase investment returns, but it’ll do nothing to reduce the pension shortfalls. Not only that, but there’s the risk lawmakers will try to bail out cities by taking over or socializing all downstate pension debt.

Illinoisans should also beware the talk of a “statewide” solution for the pension crisis. For politicians, a statewide “solution” isn’t about passing reforms, it’s about taxing everyone in Illinois. Chicago Fed economists have already suggested enacting a statewide 1 percent property tax – on top of the nation’s highest rates Illinoisans already pay – to pay for the crisis.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Crop Catastrophe In The Midwest – Latest USDA Crop Progress Report Indicates That A Nightmare Scenario Is Upon Us

May 27, 2019

Crop Catastrophe In The Midwest – Latest USDA Crop Progress Report Indicates That A Nightmare Scenario Is Upon Us

The last 12 months have been the wettest in all of U.S. history, and this has created absolutely horrific conditions for U.S. farmers. Thanks to endless rain and historic flooding that has stretched on for months, many farmers have not been able to plant crops at all, and a lot of the crops that have actually been planted are deeply struggling. What this means is that U.S. agricultural production is going to be way, way down this year. The numbers that I am about to share with you are deeply alarming, and they should serve as a wake up call for all of us. The food that each one of us eats every day is produced by our farmers, and right now our farmers are truly facing a nightmare scenario.

You can view the latest USDA crop progress report right here. According to that report, corn and soybean production is way behind expectations.

Last year, 78 percent of all corn acreage had been planted by now. This year, that number is sitting at just 49 percent.

And the percentage of corn that has emerged from the ground is at a paltry 19 percent compared to 47 percent at this time last year.

We see similar numbers when we look at soybeans.

Last year, 53 percent of all soybean acreage had been planted by now. This year, that number has fallen to 19 percent.

And the percentage of soybeans that have emerged from the ground is just 5 percent compared to 24 percent at this time last year.

In other words, we are going to have a whole lot less corn and soybeans this year.

Farmers in the middle of the country desperately need conditions to dry out for an extended period of time, but so far that has not happened.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Total Catastrophe For U.S. Corn Production: Only 30% Of U.S. Corn Fields Have Been Planted – 5 Year Average Is 66%

May 16, 2019

Total Catastrophe For U.S. Corn Production: Only 30% Of U.S. Corn Fields Have Been Planted – 5 Year Average Is 66%

2019 is turning out to be a nightmare that never ends for the agriculture industry. Thanks to endless rain and unprecedented flooding, fields all over the middle part of the country are absolutely soaked right now, and this has prevented many farmers from getting their crops in the ground. I knew that this was a problem, but when I heard that only 30 percent of U.S. corn fields had been planted as of Sunday, I had a really hard time believing it. But it turns out that number is 100 percent accurate. And at this point corn farmers are up against a wall because crop insurance final planting dates have either already passed or are coming up very quickly. In addition, for every day after May 15th that corn is not in the ground, farmers lose approximately 2 percent of their yield. Unfortunately, more rain is on the way, and it looks like thousands of corn farmers will not be able to plant corn at all this year. It is no exaggeration to say that what we are facing is a true national catastrophe.

According to the Department of Agriculture, over the past five years an average of 66 percent of all corn fields were already planted by now…

U.S. farmers seeded 30% of the U.S. 2019 corn crop by Sunday, the government said, lagging the five-year average of 66%. The soybean crop was 9% planted, behind the five-year average of 29%.

Soybean farmers have more time to recover, but they are facing a unique problem of their own which we will talk about later in the article.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Outlaw Government Pensions? The Hunt for Endless Taxes

December 23, 2018

Outlaw Government Pensions? The Hunt for Endless Taxes

The commentary that has appeared in Forbes calls for the only solution is to outlaw pensions. This is actually what will happen. Because there is no resolution, the government pensions will demand to raise taxes and then there is never any reform in government so the end game is one major economic confrontation – the people v government. They really cannot grasp that the crisis is profound. For every person who retires, the government hires a replacement. The cost of government explodes exponentially. The system is doomed and this is what is going to rise up into civil unrest.

Federal governments can create money but state/provincial and local government can only raise taxes. In Germany, the lessor governments are petitioning the federal government for a bailout since already 40% are effectively broke. It is this desperate letter we received from California trying to claim we must pay taxes simply because Amazon may store some reports or DVDs in their California warehouse. If you buy something from Amazon, they send it to you and collect whatever tax. They remit the tax and we do not mail the products nor receiver the taxes collected. We would have no idea what tax would be owed to California. Obviously, we have no choice but to inform Amazon to remove all our products from California. If everyone is compelled to do the same, then there go those jobs in their California warehouse.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Fate of All Municipal Governments – Look to Peoria, Illinois

December 13, 2018

The Fate of All Municipal Governments – Look to Peoria, Illinois

The system we have is totally corrupt and it outright UNSUSTAINABLE!!!! In Illinois, the city of Peoria has been forced to eliminate 22 firefighter and 16 police positions even after they made 27 layoffs earlier this year. Besides eliminating employees, they are now looking at adding a tax of $50-$300 to try to cover their own pension schemes as pension spending consuming everything. Pension costs are forcing Peoria to cut 38 emergency worker positions and to raise property taxes further. Peoria joins the south Chicago suburb of Harvey which is yet another warning of what is coming over the next three years into 2021.

JP Morgan Expert: True Debt, Pension, Healthcare Payments Would Consume Half of Illinois Revenue, Bankruptcy Option Needed

October 11, 2018

JP Morgan Expert: True Debt, Pension, Healthcare Payments Would Consume Half of Illinois Revenue, Bankruptcy Option Needed

Michael Cembalest is Chairman of Market and Investment Strategy at J.P. Morgan Asset Management.

His report released yesterday, The ARC and the Covenants, updates his earlier research comparing the percentage of state revenues needed to pay interest on general obligation debt, and meet all future pension and retiree healthcare obligations. [The link to the report appears to be working sporadically: https://www.jpmorgan.com/directdoc/ARC4_ES.pdf ]

Most states, he concludes, have manageable burdens (which he defines as 15% or less).

Not Illinois, which is far worst among the states. By his calculations, 51% of state revenue would have to go towards debt, pensions and retiree healthcare to reach full funding, and that would take 30 years. He assumes all pensions will earn 6% per year on invested assets. His comparison chart is below.

For the worst off states, particularly Illinois and New Jersey, Cembalest says a solution based on tax increases or higher employee contributions is probably neither economically or politically viable.

Hence, the bankruptcy option:

I participated in a seminar at Harvard’s Kennedy School last year, and there was a sense that the US should use the Promesa legislation for Puerto Rico as a dry run for creating state-level bankruptcy rules, just in case. I think the expansion of Chapter 9 legislation for states makes sense, and I’m not the only one.

He cites former FDIC Chairman William M. Isaac, who earlier wrote:

The city of Chicago and the state of Illinois should act now to restructure their liabilities and put the fiscal mess behind them. This can be accomplished by utilizing Chapter 9 and other tools Congress just gave Puerto Rico. The process would entail about two years of unpleasant headlines, but the city and the state will rebound far sooner and less painfully than if t hey stay on their current paths.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Moody’s: Illinois pension debt-to-revenue ratio hits all-time high for any state

September 1, 2018

Moody’s: Illinois pension debt-to-revenue ratio hits all-time high for any state

According to a new report by Moody’s Investors Service, Illinois’ unfunded pension liabilities equaled 601 percent of state revenues in 2017, a U.S. record.

Illinois’ pension debt has set a new record to which no state should aspire.

Credit ratings agency Moody’s Investors Service released a report Aug. 27 comparing unfunded pension liabilities across all U.S. states. According to the report, Illinois’ unfunded pension liabilities grew 25 percent in fiscal year 2017 to $250 billion. That equates to 601 percent of “own source” revenue, meaning money brought in by the state excluding federal funds. That ratio of pension debt to revenue is the highest on record for any U.S. state, according to Moody’s. The national median is 107 percent.

This matters much for the same reason banks look at an individual’s debt-to-income ratio when considering applications for a personal loan. Banks typically won’t issue a qualified mortgage to anyone with a debt-to-income ratio of more than 43 percent.

When a state’s pension debts far exceed its revenue, that means those debts are less likely to be repaid. Illinois’ inability to manage its pension system in a sustainable and affordable way is one of the main reasons both Moody’s and S&P Global Ratings put the Prairie State’s bond rating just one notch above “junk” status. The state’s credit rating has been downgraded 21 times since 2009, primarily due to runaway pension debt.

illinois credit rating downgrades

A low bond rating increases the cost of borrowing money for taxpayers and makes it difficult for state government to invest in core services residents want, such as needed infrastructure improvements.

Other measures of the state’s ability to repay pension debt tell a similarly bad story for Illinois. The state has the worst pension debt in the nation as a percentage of both GDP and personal income, which are broad economic measures that indicate how much money is being brought in by the funding sources for government expenditures: individual and corporate taxpayers.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Spotlight Danville, Illinois, My Home Town: Bankrupt

July 31, 2018

Spotlight Danville, Illinois, My Home Town: Bankrupt

Danville Illinois is bankrupt. That’s not an official announcement yet, but it will be. Pensions are at the heart of it.

I have talked about my relationship with Danvile before, but here is a brief recap.

I grew up in Danville, Illinois, the home of Chuckles (the candy), Hyster (lift forks), Lauhoff (the world’s largest grain elevator), Petersen Puritan (one of the world’s largest aerosol bottling plants, think deodorant sprays), a GM foundry in adjacent Tilton, and many other industries.

All of those industries but Hyster are gone or sold to other companies. Hyster remains but production of forklifts doesn’t. Lauhoff is now the Bunge corporation. Inquiring minds may be interested in the History of Chuckles, no longer made in Danville.

Dick Van Dyke, Jerry Van Dyke, Bobby Short, Gene Hackman, Irving Azoff, Hellen Morgan, are some of the celebrities that were born or raised in Danville.

The population of Danville was 44,000+ when I was in high school. It’s now 31,597 despite huge growth in area.

I graduated from Danville Schlarman, a Catholic high school, in 1971 and graduated from the University of Illinois in 1976. My goal was to escape the area, and I did.

Curiously, just today, I was labeled a “traitor” for this. I will return to that in a moments, but let’s get to the real story why towns like Danville are bankrupt.

Spotlight Pensions

WirePoints reports Illinois Mayors Have Little Control Over Pension Costs.

Ask Danville, Illinois, Mayor Scott Eisenhauer if he has any control over his police and fire pension mess and you’ll quickly see frustration set in. “Springfield makes all the rules but localities have to pay for them.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Illinois to Impose 1% Property Tax on Top of Everything Annually for 30 Years

May 14, 2018

Illinois to Impose 1% Property Tax on Top of Everything Annually for 30 Years

In Illinois is a State that should just commit suicide and be emerged into surrounding states. It is following the EXACT pattern as the fall of the city of Rome itself. Constantine the Great moved the Roman capital from Rome to Constantinople around 330AD. Rome lost its status as corruption and taxes rose. More and more people just walked away from their property for there was NO BID.

Property values are already collapsing in Illinois. The Pension Crisis is worldwide, but Illinois is leading the charge. The words of Edward Gibbon from his Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire are very applicable to Chicago. This is how empires, nations, and city-states die. It is always the abuse of taxation that drives people from their homes. Illinois is the NUMBER ONE state that now has a NET loss of citizens and people are fleeing that state. Bureaucrats cannot see the trend any more than they can see their own nose. They only see raising taxes. To them there is just no other way. They come first. Gibbon wrote:

“Her primeval state, such as she -might–appear in a remote age, when Evander entertained the stranger of Troy, has been delineated by the fancy of Virgil. This Tarpeian rock was then a savage and solitary thicket; in the time of the poet, it was crowned with the golden roofs of a temple, the temple is overthrown, the gold has been pillaged, the wheel of Fortune has accomplished her revolution, and the sacred ground is again disfigured with thorns and brambles. The hill of the Capitol, on which we sit, was formerly the head of the Roman Empire, the citadel of the earth, the terror of kings; illustrated by the footsteps of so many triumphs, enriched with the spoils and tributes of so many nations.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Illinois Politicians Are Doubling Down on Failure

May 7, 2018

Illinois Politicians Are Doubling Down on Failure

In the face of a fleeing population, politicians in Illinois are doubling down on the policies that are driving people away in the first place.

When I did a poll earlier this year, asking which state would be the first to suffer a fiscal crisis, I wasn’t terribly surprised that Illinois wound up in first place.

But I was surprised by the margin. Even though there’s a good case to be made for basket-case jurisdictions such as New Jersey, California, and Connecticut, Illinois not only got a plurality of votes, it received an absolute majority.

Based on what’s happening in the Land of Lincoln, it appears that state politicians want to receive a supermajority of votes. There’s pressure for ever-higher taxes to finance an ever-more-bloated bureaucracy.

And taxpayers are voting with their feet.

The Wall Street Journal editorialized about the consequences of the state’s self-destructive fiscal policy.

Democrats in Illinois ought to be especially chastened by new IRS data showing an acceleration of out-migration. The Prairie State lost a record $4.75 billion in adjusted gross income to other states in the 2015 tax year, according to recently IRS data released. That’s up from $3.4 billion in the prior year. …Florida with zero income tax was the top destination for Illinois expatriates… What’s the matter with Illinois? Too much for us to distill in one editorial, but suffice to say that exorbitant property and business taxes have retarded economic growth. …Taxes may increase as Democrats scrounge for cash to pay for pensions. …Illinois’s unfunded pension liabilities equalled 22.8% of residents’ personal income last year, compared to a median of 3.1% across all states and 1% in Florida. …Illinois’s economy has been stagnant, growing a meager 0.9% on an inflation-adjusted annual basis since 2012—the slowest in the Great Lakes and half as fast as the U.S. overall. This year nearly 100,000 individuals have left the Illinois labor force.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Creditworthiness of New York and Illinois: One is Bankrupt

October 18, 2017

CREDITWORTHINESS OF NEW YORK AND ILLINOIS: ONE IS BANKRUPT

Summary

Unless used for capital improvements, any new Illinois State borrowing, regardless of security structure, will amount to nothing more than kicking the can further down the road.
Markets remain open to uncreditworthy government borrows longer than they should. In a low interest rate environment, investors will stretch credit standards.
Benchmark bond ratings are at variance with the rating agencies.

Everyone knows Illinois’ financial condition is poor. Conventional thinking seems to be that a bond default, should that happen, would be many years in the future. Pardon me, but wasn’t that the thinking right up to Puerto Rico’s, “We can’t pay” announcement? To answer the question of just how badly off is Illinois, I assembled a list of key creditworthiness indicators and applied them to New York, a highly rated state, and Illinois.

COMMENTARY AND BENCHMARK PRIVATE BOND RATINGS

The State of New York is managing its financial resources and obligations in a better-than-average manner. Particularly, the State’s employee pensions are reported to be 90% funded, but the general fund deficit must be contained and then eliminated. Unfunded OPEB costs are too high and can be renegotiated. Funded and pro forma unfunded long-term contractual obligations equaled 23% of general fund revenue in FY ended June 30, 2017, and exceeds the 15% threshold for a Benchmark AA or AA+ credit rating.

*Both NYS income tax and sales tax bonds are payable from annual general fund appropriation. For additional information, click here.

COMMENTARY AND BENCHMARK PRIVATE BOND RATINGS

The State of Illinois, in my opinion, is past the point of no return. It does not have the ability to raise taxes or cut spending to the degree necessary to reduce the annual cost of bond and retiree benefits from 33% to a sustainable level. The amount of debt issued by Illinois requires a moderate 8% of general fund revenues to pay P&I.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“From Horrific To Catastrophic”: Court Ruling Sends Illinois Into Financial Abyss

July 1, 2017

“From Horrific To Catastrophic”: Court Ruling Sends Illinois Into Financial Abyss

First Maine, then Connecticut, and finally late on Friday, confirming the worst case outcome many had expected, Illinois entered its third straight fiscal year without a budget as Republican Governor Bruce Rauner and Democratic lawmakers failed to agree on how to compromise over the government’s chronic deficits, pushing it closer toward becoming the first junk-rated U.S. state.

By the end of Friday – the last day of the fiscal year – Illinois legislators failed to enact a budget, and while negotiations continued amid some glimmers of hope and lawmakers planned to meet over the weekend, the failure marked a continuation of the historic impasse that’s left Illinois without a full-year budget since mid-2015, and which, recall, S&P warned one month ago will likely result in a humiliating and unprecedented downgrade of the 5th most populous US state to junk status.

Then came the begging.

According to Bloomberg, on Friday Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, a Democrat who controls much of the legislative agenda, pleaded with rating companies to “temporarily withhold judgment” as lawmakers negotiate. “Much work remains to be done,” the Democrat said on the floor of the House Friday, before the chamber adjourned for the day. “We’ll get the job done.”

Meanwhile, the state remains without a spending plan, its tax receipts and outlays mostly on “autopilot”, leaving it with a record $15 billion of unpaid bills as it spent over $6 billion more than it brought in over the past year, and with $800 million in interest on the unpaid bills alone. The impasse has devastated social-service providers, shuttering services for the homeless, disabled and poor. The lack of state aid has wrecked havoc on universities, putting their accreditation at risk.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Illinois Comptroller: “The State Can No Longer Function”

June 20, 2017

Illinois Comptroller: “The State Can No Longer Function”

With just 10 days to go until Illinois enters its third year without a budget, resulting in the state’s imminent downgrade to junk status and potentially culminating in a default for the state whose unpaid bills now surpass $15 billion, Democratic Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza issued a warning to Illinois Gov. Rauner and other elected officials on Tuesday, saying in a letter that her office has “very serious concerns” it may no longer be able to guarantee “timely and predictable payments” for some core services.

In the letter posted on her website, Mendoza who over the weekend warned that Illinois is “in massive crisis mode” and that “this is not a false alarm” said the state is “effectively hemorrhaging money” due to various court orders and laws that have left government spending roughly $600 million more a month than it’s taking in. Mendoza said her office will continue to make debt payments as required, but indicated that services most likely to be affected include long-term care, hospice and supportive living centers for seniors. She added that managed care organizations that serve Medicaid recipients are owed more than $2.8 billion in overdue bills as of June 15.

“The state can no longer function without a responsible and complete budget without severely impacting our core obligations and decimating services to the state’s most in-need citizens,” Mendoza wrote. “We must put our fiscal house in order. It is already too late. Action is needed now.”

Unveiling the most dire langage yet, in her letter Mendoza said “we are now reaching a new phase of crisis” perhaps in an attempt to prompt the Democrats and Republicans to sit down and come up with a comrpomise:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Illinois on the Brink of Bankruptcy

April 4, 2016

Illinois on the Brink of Bankruptcy

The pension crisis is brewing and the one state that appears to be heading toward a complete bankruptcy is Illinois. Clients should not own ANY debt from Illinois, be it city, municipal, or state. Just get out before the curtain falls. The Illinois Constitution plainly states that pension benefits, once granted, “shall not be diminished or impaired.” Thus, taxpayers are absolutely screwed and this is not a place you want to own property. Governments cannot negotiate to reduce pensions so state workers will be pitted against taxpayers. The Supreme Court has struck down any attempt to reduce liabilities based upon this clause in the Illinois Constitution.

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