December 14: Muniland Snaps
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Child homelessness: the saddest American metric. Source: Stephen Culp, Reuters
Good Links
Bloomberg: Meredith Whitney, you are clueless and here is why
NYT: Public pensions and private equity
CEF Connect: Muniland overheating slightly as closed-end fund priced higher than NAV
National Conference of State Legislatures: 2009 state legislator education levels
NYT: Medicaid is the states’ monster
Stateline: Budget cuts are creating backlogs at state agencies
McClatchy: South Carolina, home to a lot of military facilities, is bracing for budget cuts
FT: The toffs at the FT consider Pittsburgh the U.S.’s “most livable city”
@Twitter Talk
@kjrose Kelly John Rose Fascinating: Top economists show graphs that explain the past year of madness. bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictur…
@ChadPergram Chad Pergram Clock really ticking on keeping fed govt open. Funding expires at 11:59:59 pm et Friday. There’s trouble if they don’t file bill today.
@drgrist David Roberts Rep. Jim Clyburn: “We don’t demand drug testing for people getting farm subsidies.” politi.co/uRzZKC
@csmonitor CSMonitor.com ’Since 2007, the homeless child population in 15 states increased by more than 50 percent.’ fb.me/1suqK2U8s
@PhilFedComDev Phila Fed Com Dev Add an interactive widget that produces demographic maps of communities to your website. ow.ly/7Pfe6
@RichSaskal_BB Rich Saskal Designing solar rooftop for Salt Lake convention center far less challenging than the $7 million financing. bondbuyer.com/issues/120_238…
@PlattsGas Platts gas Texas joins Colorado in passing rule for fracking disclosure. Read full Platts story: plts.co/tex1213
@tmaniccia Tim Maniccia Gov. John Kitzhaber orders Oregon government hiring freeze oregonlive.com/politics/index…
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What gives with the quote in the Meridith Whitman article, to wit:
“Richard Lehmann, the Miami Lakes, Florida-based publisher of the Distressed Debt Securities Newsletter, has predicted a record of at least $20 billion in municipal defaults this year, including some that don’t involve missed payments so aren’t counted as such by other analysts, according to Matt Fabian, a Municipal Market Advisors managing director. Fabian says by his count, defaults have reached $2.1 billion this year, down from about $2.8 billion in 2011. Even by Lehmann’s count, the pace falls far short of Whitney’s outlook.”
Putting aside he likely meant 2010, not 2011 in next to last sentence, the clear impression is that we’re looking at muni defaults of something a little north of $20mil.
However, in the next article, Year End in Muniland, Part I, we get the following quote:
“During 2011, America Airlines (AA) accounted for $3.4 billion of muni defaults while Tobacco bonds had $16.9bln of defaults. Combined, AA and the tobacco bonds comprised slightly more than 87% of municipal bond defaults. Even though the volume of defaults has risen (and may continue to rise due to the presence of $50bln of outstanding Tobacco Bonds) we do not believe that there are systemic problems within the muni market.”
In other words we’ve got a discrepancy of at least one of order of magnitude in defaults for 2011. How does this get reconciled?
Hi Muniman:
There are always differences in muniland stats… some is a matter of definition and some is a matter of better data. But the paragraph you cite from Bloomberg seems to be a missed edit:
Richard Lehmann, the Miami Lakes, Florida-based publisher of the Distressed Debt Securities Newsletter, has predicted a record of at least $20 billion in municipal defaults this year, including some that don’t involve missed payments so aren’t counted as such by other analysts, according to Matt Fabian, a Municipal Market Advisors managing director. Fabian says by his count, defaults have reached $2.1 billion this year, down from about $2.8 billion in 2011. Even by Lehmann’s count, the pace falls far short of Whitney’s outlook