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And The Winner In The "Worst Idea At The Wrong Time" Category Is...

Tyler Durden's picture




 

The undisputed winner in this year's "Worst Idea At The Wrong Time" category is the poor suburb of Ferguson, Missouri, a town which was looted, burned and generally eviscerated on several occasions in the past few months as a result of public anger first at the murder of Mike Brown and subsequently, the acquital of the police officer who shot him.

Why? Because according to Bloomberg, in order to close a municipal budget gap - and keep in mind the prevailing poverty in the region has been widely attributed as one of the reason for the escalating violence on either side of the law - Ferguson plans to boost revenue from public-safety fines and tapping reserves.

According to Ferguson's finance director, Jeffrey Blume, revenue from violations, which already represents the city’s second-largest source of cash after sales taxes, are projected to rise to 15.7% of receipts in fiscal 2015, up from 11.8% currently. In 2013, fines brought in $2.2 million, or 11.8 percent of the city’s $18.62 million in annual revenue, according to budget documents.

This means that local cops will now have an even bigger, and more aggressive quota of miscellaneous, petty offenses to fill, in order to collect money from an already impoverished population, and in the process antagonize said population even further, more than likely leading to the same if not worse outcomes that caused the riots in the first place.

From Bloomberg:

To close a projected deficit for fiscal 2014, which ended June 30, the municipality will deplete a $10 million capital-projects reserve, Jeffrey Blume, Ferguson’s finance director, said in a telephone interview. For the current year, the city is budgeting for higher receipts from police-issued tickets.

 

“There are a number of things going on in 2014 and one is a revenue shortfall that we anticipate making up in 2015,” Blume said. “There’s about a million-dollar increase in public-safety fines to make up the difference.”

Even with the added police ticketing, the city - which will certainly incur millions in renovation and infrastructure costs as a result of what for a while seemed to be daily rioting - will see a revenue shortfall in the coming year: even with the increased ticketing, a $4.09 million budget deficit will remain for fiscal 2015. The city will bridge that gap by drawing on its $10.3 million unassigned reserve, the last of its reserve funds, Blume said. Moody’s Investors Service cited an inability to maintain reserves at satisfactory levels as a potential downgrade trigger in a report from December 2012.

In other words, very soon Ferguson may soon add Chapter 9 bankruptcy to its list of woes. But to get there it will first need to avoid being burned down all over again:

Howard Cure, head of municipal research at New York-based Evercore Wealth Management LLC, which oversees $5.2 billion, said Ferguson’s reliance on revenue from police citations may have contributed to public anger after officer Darren Wilson shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown.

 

“It leads to animosity and distrust that might have even spawned some of the unrest that we’re seeing,” Cure said.

 

Government dependence on police fines is a larger issue in surrounding St. Louis County, especially among its “poor” and “small” communities, Tim Fischesser, executive director of the St. Louis Municipal League, said in a telephone interview. The poverty rate in Ferguson was 22 percent in 2012, the latest year for which data is available, compared with a national average of 15 percent, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

 

“They said they weren’t going to go after poor people, so to speak, to fund their budget, but I guess that’s changed, Fischesser said.

And so the Catch 22 of modern insolvent America emerges: while the seaboard megapolises continue to thrive on the back of the financialization of the US service economy thanks to some $300 trillion in derivatives (if only for the time being), the poorer cities in America's heartland are caught in a toxic spiral whereby poor populations are unable to pay enough sales tax to keep city funding afloat, and so cities are forced to resort to forced, and armed, Police extraction of "municipal revenues", adding widespread anger to what already is a combustible mix of poverty and resentment, and worsening it at every turn, until it finally all spontaneously combusts when popular anger explodes leading to such events as the Ferguson riots. This should also help explain the unprecedented, and stealthy, militarization of police forces across the United States in the past year.

Unfortunately, since there are countless other cities just like Ferguson and just as many police forces who just happen to be the last bastion of "municipal revenue collection", the probability of future social violence across America rises exponentially.

What is more, even Wall Street has finally realized just how interconnected the problems facing America's inner slums are:

Reliance on a revenue stream like police fines was problematic from a purely credit perspective as well, said Joe Rosenblum, director of municipal credit research at New York-based AllianceBernstein LP.

 

“Any community that faces budget issuers with a whole series of financial and social challenges you have to approach with a skeptical mind,” he said. “I’d be fairly negative on the outlook from a credit perspective.”

 

Trading in Ferguson debt indicates that investors in the $3.7 trillion municipal market have started to take note of financial issues. Yields on the city’s 2013 certificates of participation maturing in 2032 exceded 4 percent last week from 3.5 percent as prices fell below 90 cents on the dollar for the first time since issuance, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

They will go far wider before the realization that yet another municipal US bankruptcy is inevitable. As for the fate that lies before a soon to be insolvent and very violent Ferguson, Bloomberg is politically correct: it "may risk worsening community relations with increased citations and weakening its credit standing by reducing a rainy-day fund."

A more accurate summary is that what has happened so far in the poor St. Louis suburb is only an appetizer of what is to come, not only in Ferguson itself but across America, where kicking of responsibility, accountability and simple math, has become next to impossible.

 

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Sat, 12/13/2014 - 13:19 | 5548229 Last of the Mid...
Last of the Middle Class's picture

You gotta love people so dumb the burn their own town down in protest of unfair treatment and then decide to have the same cops write more tickets to pay for it. Does the phrase dumbass fucking dipshits manipulated by race baiters mean anything to you. Propaganda Works! don't ever doubt it. That whole thing was a made for TV special.

Sat, 12/13/2014 - 13:27 | 5548252 IndianaJohn
IndianaJohn's picture

"the murder of Mike Brown"  Ass backwards fucked-up in the first paragraph. I quit reading.

Sat, 12/13/2014 - 13:51 | 5548306 Suisse
Suisse's picture

ZH is turning into InfoWars, look at some of the top comments.

Sat, 12/13/2014 - 13:43 | 5548293 basho
basho's picture

" in order to close a municipal budget gap "

now that's creative thinking lmao

Sat, 12/13/2014 - 13:44 | 5548295 theyjustcantstop
theyjustcantstop's picture

it's the circle of life in places like fergusen.

to many people settling for lbj's allowance instead of working for a better life.

to many people surrounding you in your life constantly, teachers, community organizers, and sharptons, telling you it's not your fault, you are where you are because of white people, and the life-long unfairness to black-americans.

on your lbj allowance you can't afford to live anywhere else, or buy a car to look for work, and subsequently drive to work.

if people had, or would find work, it would take up 18-20 hrs. of your free time per day, less time to get into trouble, and riot.

this leaves a district with a zero tax-base, which is bad no matter how you look at.

nice to know what o'bama's ss's, citizen behavioral corps placements, and military strengths are.

are these strong southern placements to protect the embedded americans, or newly amnestied?

 

 

Sat, 12/13/2014 - 13:44 | 5548296 Spectre
Spectre's picture

BFD! If the idiots in Ferguson would try to follow the laws, there would be NO ticket issuing.  Pretty simple math....

Sat, 12/13/2014 - 13:52 | 5548304 Laddie
Laddie's picture

a result of public anger first at the murder of Mike Brown

Well that statement is NOT true, however given the unrelenting media spin on this event it is quite understandable for the error.

The attempt by the government there to obtain funds necessary to continue government functions is, as Tyler notes, quite a bad idea, yet government has grown beyond the ken of the Founding Fathers, and one could say the Federal laws in 1913 and the FDR Bolshevik regime followed by ALL THE REST expanded, expanded and yet again expanded government size and demand for our money.

That said the reason they wanted the control and our money is so that they could dispossess us. They are nearly there in achieving their goal.

They want Whites to be completely defenseless against the colored majority. When a White defends him or herself .gov and the people of color lobby howl for that White's blood! The white middle class says nothing about the ongoing genocide of Whites, because they have been brainwashed by schools, churches, .gov, the televitz and Hollyweird. Our people are being slaughtered AND NOBODY SAYS ANYTHING ABOUT IT!

And why is that? It is because the Media Bosses, an arm of the tribe, do NOT want Whites knowing what is REALLY going on, now Zero Hedge is one of the most read websites in the world, but still a minority, a small minority, of the American people read it, of course if they did then the fall of the Evil Empire of Oligarchs would happen, and soon....

THE COMING DARKNESS: A Warning for Americans: A message from South Africa
Written in 2000 by the wife of a former conservative member of parliament, they still reside in South Africa.

The Third World is different - different peoples with different pasts and different cultures. Yet Westerners continue to mistake the psychology of the Third World and its peoples. Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe are perfect examples of those mistakes. Sierra Leone is in perpetual civil war, and Zimbabwe - once the thriving, stable Rhodesia - is looting the very people (the white men) who feed the country. Yet Westerners do not admit that the same kind of savagery could come to America when enough immigrants of the right type assert themselves. The fact is, Americans are sitting ducks for Third World exploitation of the Western conscience of compassion.

Those in the West who forced South Africa to surrender to the ANC and its leaders did not consider Africa to be the dangerous, corrupt, and savage place it is now in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Those Western politicians now have a similar problem looming on their own doorsteps: the demand for power and treasure from the non-Western peoples inside the realm.

It is already too late for South Africa, but not for America if
enough people strengthen their spine and take on the race
terrorists, the armies of the "politically correct" and, most dangerous of all, the craven politicians who believe "compassionate conservatism" will buy them a few more votes, a few more days of peace.

White South Africans, you should remember, have been in that part of Africa for the same amount of time whites have inhabited North America; yet ultimately South Africans voted for their own suicide. We are not so very different from you.

Sat, 12/13/2014 - 13:56 | 5548319 joego1
joego1's picture

They will keep beating on the Hornets nest until they can pay the bills.

Sat, 12/13/2014 - 18:39 | 5548928 Bumbu Sauce
Bumbu Sauce's picture

That is 100% what this whole thing has been about.

 

Wealth transfer payments.

Sat, 12/13/2014 - 14:07 | 5548342 sunnyside
sunnyside's picture

"at the murder of Mike Brown and subsequently, the acquital of the police officer who shot him."

 

As much bias and as many errors as a Rolling Stone article.

Sat, 12/13/2014 - 21:49 | 5549331 yellowlight4570
yellowlight4570's picture

ZH is getting dam near unreadable. This nonsence is about my limit and I love doom porn. ZH's Russian roots are as visiable as the grey hairs on a fifty year old hooker.

Sat, 12/13/2014 - 14:28 | 5548395 loregnum
loregnum's picture

Great, so now we'll have more blacks there claiming racism over this since white people are never fined for minor things, especially when cities are looking for extra revenue. Then of course the blacks will riiot and loot which will cost the city more money meaning more crackdown meaning more blacks crying racism and getting pissed off and mkaing everything worse.

I swear that the only way many blacks in our society would be content is if they were allowed to do anything they wanted and were all handed millions of dollars from ol' whitey. Even then, if/when they blew the money they'd probably still claim racism. They need to move on from slavery and segregation.

I have a feeling that if more black people over the last 30 or 40 years had spent less time crying about how the entire country is racist and holding them down and actually went and decided to improve their lives that the amount of blacks living in poverty would be much much lower. I guess though it's easier to just complain about how unfair things are (real or imagined) and blame others for every single thing than to actually do something about. Also, black people livng in poverty should quit having a bunch of babies as last I checked, having children you can't afford doesn't make your financial situation better.

There are many prominent black people in society who worked hard to get where they are at so clearly the enitre race isn't held down like so many of these people seem to think.

Sat, 12/13/2014 - 14:34 | 5548407 thamnosma
thamnosma's picture

Michael Brown was a thug and was not murdered.  What a load of total horseshit.

Sat, 12/13/2014 - 14:47 | 5548446 kchrisc
kchrisc's picture

Always about money and power. Always.

Only the guillotines can bring an end to it.

An American, not US subject.

 

And since the indebted Ferguson is using the gun and badge thugs as revenuers, the gun and badge thugs in actuality work for the banksters.

Sat, 12/13/2014 - 15:02 | 5548479 hadriansnightmare
hadriansnightmare's picture

Murdered?  I guess I need a new dictionary.

Sat, 12/13/2014 - 16:32 | 5548651 kchrisc
kchrisc's picture

Since he was killed within 90 seconds of contact, we will never know. "Dead men tell no tales."

But then Eric Garner's death WAS ruled a murder, yet the murderer was allowed to walk because he is a good revenuer for the state.

And then, Kelly Thomas wasn't murdered either, just pummeled unrecognizable, literally, into a coma, then he died. I guess the coma killed him not the revenueing gun and badge thugs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7YFKm9gnKo

An American, not US subject.

 

"They are coming for all of us, they just haven't gotten to you yet."

Sat, 12/13/2014 - 18:30 | 5548903 bardot63
bardot63's picture

Yeah, we'll need one that defines 'acquitted' also.  Who the fuck wrote this trash? 

Sat, 12/13/2014 - 16:07 | 5548596 SmilinJoeFizzion
SmilinJoeFizzion's picture

Here's your hero in all his glory Ferguson

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8nguoNxwycc

Sat, 12/13/2014 - 18:32 | 5548908 Monty Burns
Monty Burns's picture

Some excerpt from a report on CNN about this paragon.  I think the last one in particular is priceless.

"He was funny, silly. He would make you laugh. Any problems that were going on or any situation, there wasn't nothing he couldn't solve. He'd bring people back together," his father, Michael Brown Sr., told reporters.

Family members nicknamed him the "gentle giant."

For teachers, he was "a student who loomed large and didn't cause trouble,"

Friends and family said the teenager was ecstatic about starting classes at Vatterott College. And he was proud to be setting an example for his younger siblings.

"He was a leader. He knew what he wanted out of life," his father said. "He was a good kid."

"He hoped to become a heating and cooling engineer, "He wanted to own his own business. He'd say, 'Let's make something out of nothing.'"

 "If I leave this earth today, at least you'll know I care about others more than I cared about my damn self."

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