Thursday, December 9, 2010

Munis

When typing the title to this post, I showed my hand-brain disconnect and typed minus. Same letters, interesting meaning.

The conversation about state defaults and municipal bonds failing seems to have died down. Build America bonds, whatever they are (federally subsidized taxable bond sales by states and municipalities), are not part of the tax plan. California's Governer Moonbeam is supposed to be giving citizens a choice of higher taxes or lower spending - sure, I'll pay more or get less!  Blue states, which send in most of the money to DC, are whining about sending more  than they get back yet want to tax the rich more.

Blah, blah, blah.  I turn to tube off as soon as any politician starts with the partisan speak.

You know where we should get out cues? The market. Check this out.


The muni-bond ETF had just what I called it last month - a dead cat bounce. How high will a dead elephant bounce? A dead 800-pound gorilla?

Funny, the market is pure capitalism, isn't it. And it tells us the truth.

1 comment:

JS71 said...

Pretty seriously overbought market on our hands (stocks).

Munis, yes crashing hard. States are a joke. If I ran my household finances like NY or IL (or others) my assets would be frozen and I'd be out on the street.

Here in NYS, we have teachers who retired at 55 making 80k per year w/o ever contributing a nickel into retirement-all on the taxpayer (similar to CA).

In the newspaper recently, it was reported that a firefighter retired this year in his mid 50's at 100k per year via "income spiking."(averaged 125k with overtime in last 3 years of employment). That is 100k per year with benefits.

Entirely funded by the State, the individual workers in these situations never kick in a penny nor will they ever.

Budget crisis, what budget crisis?

This is GM on a grander scale. And folks wonder why state pension funds reached deeply for risk in in the mid 2000's, and are doing it again.