Several Communities In NY On Brink Of Bankruptcy, Govt Employees Blamed

It appears things in upstate New York are not all peachy.

Written by Chris Boyle, editorial@antonnews.com Friday, 06 September 2013 00:00

At the Theodore Roosevelt Legislative Building in Mineola on Tuesday, Aug. 27, Sen. Jack Martins and State Senator Carl Marcellino held a public hearing entitled, “Fiscally Distressed Municipalities: Preparing for and Preventing Municipal Bankruptcy in New York.”

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Communities upstate, where two similar hearings have already been held, are “teetering on the brink,” according to Martins. “It’s a wake-up call for all of us,” he said

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Steve Levy, former Suffolk County Executive and current president of Common Sense Strategies, a finance efficiency consulting firm, testified that the three main issues facing municipalities and local government in New York State are the rising costs of pensions and health care, plus disability fraud, especially among police and civil service positions.

“We need to start eliminating overtime when calculating the amount of pensions…We have people retiring and earning pensions that are over $100,000 a year,” he said. “This is starting to bankrupt local governments.”

http://www.antonnews.com/plainviewoldbethpageherald/news/32416-local-pols-speak-on-bankruptcies.html

Wow, retiring from a govt job and getting $100,000 a year? Disability fraud especially among cops?

I think we sometimes concern ourselves too much about macro economics/politics, and let our local govts get away with fraud and illegal financial gain, all putting a yoke on the backs of the citizens.

In some ways, this wouldn’t be a problem, as the funds would circulate in the local economy anyways, but local leaders are investing bonds (money borrowed from the community) into the derivatives market, which is taking money out of the economy and sending it to foreign banks, mostly owned by the British Commonwealth.

31 Jul 2013Peter Hamner

A state-run affordable-housing company presented enough evidence to continue with its antitrust lawsuit alleging insurance and financial services giant Transamerica conspired to manipulate the municipal derivatives market, a federal judge has ruled.

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The case is part of a multidistrict class-action proceeding alleging a municipal derivatives market conspiracy among a number of financial institutions including Wachovia Bank, UBS, Societe Generale, AIG Financial Products Corp. and GE Funding Capital Market Services.  In re Mun. Derivatives Antitrust Litig., No. 08 MDL. No. 1950 (S.D.N.Y.).

http://blog.thomsonreuters.com/index.php/judge-oks-suit-claiming-banks-rigged-municipal-derivatives-market/