local government

Meredith Whitney has a new report out that she has been working on for two years called "Tragedy of the Commons" in which she rates several U.S. states. Based on Whitney's analysis, problems in municipal finance could be the next…

by John Lounsbury Average home prices are virtually unchanged from July 2009 to July 2010 according to the latest report form First American CoreLogic, which provided the data for the following graph from Calculated Risk. The graph has…

Frederick Sheehan is the author of Panderer to Power: The Untold Story of How Alan Greenspan Enriched Wall Street and Left a Legacy of Recession (McGraw-Hill, 2009). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, is defaulting; Half Moon Bay, California, is…

By John Mauldin A report just out from the Center for Policy Analysis, by Courtney Collins and Andrew J. Rettenmaier (solid academic types from Mercer University and Texas A&M respectively), that indicates that state and local pension…

I heard this about Bell, California on the car radio this morning. The sums involved are absolutely astronomical for a town of 37,000.  This may be an extreme case but it far from isolated. Hundreds of residents of one of the…

Frederick Sheehan is the author of Panderer to Power: The Untold Story of How Alan Greenspan Enriched Wall Street and Left a Legacy of Recession  (McGraw-Hill, 2009). Discussions about municipal finance generally assume three…

The first real warning that growth in the global economy was set to decline came in April. And since then, the signs of distress have only increased. In the US, the distress is everywhere – in the housing data, the employment figures, and…

While California has been the poster boy for state budgetary woes, Illinois has moved into the top spot as the US state most likely to default on its debt. To avoid default more cuts are going to be necessary. See recent posts by me and…

The European debt crisis has thus far unfolded as a sovereign debt crisis.  And the sovereign here is the national government.  This is particularly true in Greece. However in the coming months, it may become clearer that local…

In looking back on the efficacy of stimulus in the United States, Ezra Klein has a few thoughts in the Washington Post's "You've seen the stimulus. Now, meet the anti-stimulus." A multiple choice question for you: Did the…