MuniLand

Howard Cure, director of municipal research at Evercore Wealth Management, is asked in this Bloomberg video if Jefferson County, AL and Central Falls, RI are leading indicators of massive defaults in the municipal bond markets. He thinks not. After all, he says, these problems have been known for years.  For Cure, the real focus should be on what he calls the “three H’s:” hospitals, higher education and housing.  These entities are often heavily reliant on federal funds, which may be reduced in deficit negotiations. Muniland agrees and reminds everyone that there are vast differences in the fiscal and financial strengths of issuers.

Bondholders will win in trashed Rhode Island town

The Wall Street Journal is running a story on the Central Falls bankruptcy entitled “Bondholders Win in Rhode Island.” The story lauds how bondholders are ensured of receiving 100 cents on the dollar, although the bonds are currently valued at 62 cents on the dollar. Meanwhile retirees can expect their pensions to be cut by 34%.

Reading through the comments to a Providence Journal story on the threat to the state’s credit rating from the bankruptcy proceedings, I came across the following comment detailing the abject poverty of Central Falls, the community which is supposed to pay bondholders off at par. It’s shameful that a busted community would impose haircuts on all their creditors except bondholders.

Here is my rant:

I was born, grew up and spent the first 28 years of my life in CF [Central Falls]. I eventually moved out of state (to VT). Coincidentally, on this past Monday, I was back in RI and needed to drive through CF on my way from Cumberland to Pawtucket. It was the first time that I had driven through CF in quite a few years. I can’t tell you how shocked I was, almost to the point of being heartbroken.

I’ve traveled the world and it was truly like driving through a third world country. The mounds of trash lining the roads and the fronts of peoples properties was disgusting. Trash was also strewn around peoples yards. Potholes, boarded up houses, broken street lights, graffiti, the list goes on and on. My only thought was ‘Stick a fork in this city, it’s done’. I couldn’t wait to get out of that god-forsaken place, which I immediately did.

Something doesn’t seem right in Central Falls, the Rhode Island city that declared municipal bankruptcy yesterday. Now that the state receiver has filed Chapter 9, all the town’s dirty laundry has been hung out in public, and, like any bankruptcy, it’s not pretty. Overspending and declining tax revenues doomed this poor town, along with liberal doses of alleged corruption.

Here is what doesn’t seem right in Central Falls. The city is dead broke and those they owe money to are lined up at City Hall to collect. But for some odd reason, the city’s bondholders have pushed ahead of all the others in line to claim full repayment of their debts; those later in line must settle for 50 cents on the dollar. Retired police officers and firemen will have their pensions cut by 50%.

It wasn’t Central Falls’s decision to give preferential treatment to bondholders. Last year legislators in the state capitol passed a law making the claims of bondholders superior to all other claims in bankruptcy. The Rhode Island General Assembly’s action flies in the the face of common bond market practice, which is that bondholders get in line with everyone else and a judge overseeing bankruptcy proceedings gives a fair resolution to all the creditors.

Central Falls, Rhode Island — the smallest city in the smallest state — filed for bankruptcy today after years of decline. It is the fifth U.S. municipality this year to seek protection from the courts under the bankruptcy law. The Governor of Rhode Island stood with city officials as the bankruptcy process commenced. Reuters quoted him as saying in a statement:

“The current situation is dire and it necessitates decisive steps to put the city back on a path to solid financial footing and future prosperity,” Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee said in a statement.

Central Falls’s population peaked in 1930 and has declined ever since; it currently has only 19,000 inhabitants. The town is extremely poor with median household income of $22,628 and per-capita income of $10,825, according to the 2000 Census. Central Falls, like many hidden American towns, is at the end of municipal row.

There are many financial linkages between various levels of government in muniland but everyone eventually has to stand on their own. It’s like the cousin you grew up with but don’t see much now other than holidays. When your cousin loses their job and their mortgage is being foreclosed you want to help but in a limited way. You want the cousin to get a job and cut a deal on their mortgage or do a short sale. You don’t want them moving into your home or having access to your bank account. It’s the same between the federal, state and local governments. They are cousins. But not that close.

My fellow Reuters blogger, Felix Salmon, said yesterday that states are considered too-big-to-fail by the financial markets:

There’s certainly a general understanding, in the markets, that California is too big to fail: if push came to shove, the federal government would bail it out rather than let it default.

The middle sadness

Paul Mason, the economics editor of the BBC’s Newsnight program, recently retraced John Steinbeck’s footsteps during America’s Great Depression.  What he found was a broad swath of sadness as he observed many citizens who have lost jobs and homes. It’s the invisible America. From the BBC:

I drop down into Albuquerque, into Joy Junction, which in the red dusk looks like a scene from Steinbeck. There are 300 homeless people staying here, all families.

Jeremy Reynalds, an expat Brit who runs the place, tells me frankly that the mainstay of the place are people with drug, alcohol and domestic violence issues. But as the years of crisis have dragged on, there is a new phenomenon – the homeless middle-class.

Geeks for democracy

“How do you enable people to have a louder voice within their communities?” asks Conor White-Sullivan. He answered his own question by developing Localocracy, a platform that hosts community-focused discussion boards seeking participants who are registered to vote and who use their real names. Localocracy gives citizens an opportunity to generate discussions to influence each other, their government and journalists.

Conor is one of 16 winners of “Champions of Change,” a contest the White House hosted in June that showcased the potential of Web apps that utilize data sets made available by federal, state and local agencies. Developers who were chosen to attend created applications that enable users to find and organize pick-up games at public facilities, guide citizens through zoning ordinances and direct parents to child-friendly locations, as well as numerous other services. See more of this wonderful project at GovTech.com.

Jefferson County part 6

According to the Birmingham News the court-appointed receiver over the Jefferson County sewer system, John S. Young, announced late Wednesday that the bondholders had a counter-proposal for the county commission. This was a few short hours before the commission’s 1:00pm meeting today to decide to declare bankruptcy.

Jefferson County, Alabama is getting a lot of attention as it negotiates with the holders of $3 billion of sewer bonds. The county would like to pay $2 billion to settle the $3 billion of bonds outstanding and limit the rate increases county residents would have to pay. This arrangement would pay bondholders (led by JP Morgan) 66 cents on the dollar — not a great recovery but not outrageous either. Bondholders want the state to guarantee this new arrangement and stand ready to pay in the event of another default.

There is an alternative option for settling the matter: a Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy. The county is now prepared to go that route if necessary and have hired an expert attorney to lead them through the process if they so choose.

The county accumulated this sewer debt over a number of years to fund the development of an EPA-mandated sewer system. Its construction was laced with delays, cost overruns and corruption. It’s the poster child for disastrous public works and bad dealing by Wall Street. The credit rating for this debt started out as AAA in 1997 when it was issued. The bond insurer FGIC stood behind the debt and helped raise the credit to the highest level, AAA, from Baa1. In the chart above you can see the rating move in February 1997 as the insurer came in and pledged to repay bondholders if default occurred.

Thanks to Jordan Eizenga at the Center for American Progress, you can see some scenarios of the impact of the halt in payments to states if the debt ceiling is not raised. Jordan says:

The key thing to remember is that these are cuts that would occur even if we protected Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense, and UI. Failing to raise the debt limit causes unavoidable pain to states.

Roll your mouse over to see the effect on each state. More analysis here.

It’s on in Alabama

The crisis in Jefferson County, Alabama is quickly coming to a head. The County Commissioners’ willingness to file for Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy is putting a lot of pressure on bondholders, led by JP Morgan, to agree to a settlement. It appears that the entire Alabama political structure is aligned to do the best for their citizens. Right now the epicenter of the struggle between the people and Wall Street is Birmingham, Alabama.

There has been a lot of discussion over the past few days about whether the United States deserves a triple-A rating. The weak and meandering attempts of the Congressional leadership and President Obama to reach a consensus on raising the debt ceiling has prompted this storm of confusion. The political theater is painful.

Most of the talk about ratings revolves around whether the level should be lowered one or more notches. But in The Telegraph today Ambrose Evans-Pritchard goes further and says it’s not really that important whether the United States retains a triple-A because the credit rating agencies don’t have the credibility to strip the rating to the world’s largest sovereign debt issuer (emphasis mine):

Yes, the US may be stripped of its AAA by Standard & Poor’s. A nice one-day story, but otherwise irrelevant. Global bond vigilantes are quite able to make their own judgement on the substantive default risk of the US. The rating agencies are out of their league on this one.

Oh Illinois!

Illinois has massive problems: the state has more liabilities than assets, and the credit-default swap market says they are the number one state at risk for default (see chart above). The Bond Buyer ran an excellent story on how the liabilities of Illinois are rapidly increasing:

In a sign of Illinois’ ongoing fiscal challenges, its net assets deteriorated by $8.4 billion in fiscal 2010, pushing its deficit in that category of financial reporting up to a negative $37.9 billion, according to a new report from state auditor general William Holland.

The figure takes into account the state’s accounts payable that were $9.1 billion in fiscal 2010 and $55.1 billion of debt obligations, including outstanding bonds and pension obligations. The figures provide a wider view of a state’s overall long-term fiscal health than the snapshot provided by annual budget numbers.