Arthur,
Unfortunately for the pensioners of Central Falls, people who buy
bonds won't do so unless the loans are treated as senior debt. If
they had to take turns, they might find themselves at the back of the
queue or, like the pensioners, receive only a proportion of what they were due.
The moral of the story is that the Council of Central Falls should
not have gone into debt in the first place. If they had wanted to
raise extra money for a specific purpose then they should have put
the matter in the hands of their electorate beforehand -- Were they
prepared to be taxed more?
Keith
At 15:55 13/08/2011, you wrote:
Subject: Faltering Rhode Island City Tests Vows to Pensioners
Bonds uber alles.
============================
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/13/us/13bankruptcy.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlin
es&emc=tha23
Faltering Rhode Island City Tests Vows to Pensioners
When the small, beleaguered city of Central Falls, R.I., filed for
bankruptcy this month, it sought to cut the pension checks it has been
sending its retired police officers, firefighters and other workers by as
much as half. All the city promises now is that its retirees, many of whom
do not get Social Security, will not have their benefits cut to less than
$10,000 a year.
But investors who bought the city's bonds could do much better: Rhode Island
recently passed a law intended to make sure that they would be paid in full,
even in bankruptcy.
Retirees are wondering how the city can cut what they believed was a
guaranteed benefit. "We put our time in, we put our money in," said Walter
Trembley, 74, a retired Central Falls police officer. "And the city, through
their callousness and everything else, just blew it. They were supposed to
put money in and they didn't."
Cities and local governments make lots of promises: to their citizens,
workers, vendors and investors. But when the money starts to run out, as it
has in Central Falls, some promises prove more binding than others. Bond
lawyers have known for decades that it is possible, at least in theory, to
put bondholders ahead of pensioners, but no one wanted to try it and risk a
backlash on Election Day. Now the poor, taxed-out city of Central Falls is
mounting a test case, which other struggling governments may follow if it
succeeds.
Sent from my iPad
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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/08/
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