Illinois: Another State Economic Meltdown

Two years ago, I pointed to yet another obvious economic crisis in the U.S.: the collapse of numerous, state economies. I was not alone. Several of the other commentators who were right about the U.S.'s economic collapse have made similar predictions.

We deserve no credit. With state spending skyrocketing, and state revenues collapsing at the fastest rate in history, even people who perform all their “arithmetic” with their fingers and toes should have been able to make this prediction. In other words, this comes as a total “surprise” to more than 90% of the brain-dead media-parrots. These zombies-with-keyboards continue to mindlessly repeat the “economic recovery” propaganda of Barack and Bennie and Timmie.

While California has received most of the (limited) U.S. media attention among the hopelessly insolvent U.S. states, it is but one of dozens of U.S. states with very serious questions about their solvency. Many of the worst U.S. states, like California, Nevada and Florida have seen their economies completely collapse because they were among the epicenters of the U.S. housing-bubble/Wall Street Ponzi-schemes.

Other U.S. states have seen their economies collapse because of severe downturns to particular sectors of their economy. This includes the “rust belt” states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, as well as states like Oregon which were dependent upon different economic sectors.

Lastly, there are many U.S. states which haven't suffered any particular disaster, but simply sacrificed their solvency through especially reckless spending, with the state of Texas being a good example. Even the reliable revenues of the state's energy sector haven't been able to save the state finances from the ravages of politicians' promises.

At the moment, however, there is no U.S. state which epitomizes the economic catastrophe currently confronting most U.S. states as does Illinois. The state which Barack Obama abandoned when he was nominated by Wall Street to be the next U.S. president is confronting numerous, extremely unpopular policy options – as the only means of the state avoiding bankruptcy this year.

The dire straits through which Illinois is attempting to navigate were summed-up well at the beginning of a recent article in the Chicago Sun-Times:

“To become solvent, the state must enact the largest tax increase package in Illinois history, whack another $2 billion from already starved government programs, and wrest major financial concessions from the state's unionized workforce...”