Author: Mary Pat Campbell

ILLINOIS’ POOREST HIT HARDEST BY COVID-19 JOB LOSS, MANY STILL UNEMPLOYED

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.illinoispolicy.org/illinois-poorest-hit-hardest-by-covid-19-job-loss-many-still-unemployed/

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Illinois households earning less than $40,000 were four-times as likely to lose their jobs from February-April 2020 and nearly 11 times as likely to still be out of work compared to those earning $75,000 or more.

As Illinois tries to rebuild after the worst year for jobs in state history, low-income Illinoisans find themselves even farther behind than others. Job losses suffered during COVID-19 and state-mandated mitigation protocols disproportionately fell on these families.

Author(s): Vincent Caruso

Publication Date: 19 February 2021

Publication Site: Illinois Policy Institute

Lightfoot sends letter to Pritzker urging him to veto firefighters pension bill

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.radio.com/us99/news/local/lightfoot-urges-pritzker-to-veto-firefighters-pension-bill#new_tab

Excerpt:

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is urging Governor JB Pritzker to veto a bill boosting pensions for thousands of Chicago firefighters.

The bill, introduced by state Sen. Robert Martwick, D-Chicago, passed in the waning hours of the lame duck session and awaits Pritzker’s signature or veto.

Mayor Lightfoot said the pension legislation will lead to perpetual property tax increases.

Author(s): Mike Krauser

Publication Date: 19 February 2021

Publication Site: WBBM Chicago

Officials Pledged to Address Rising Black Suicides in Chicago. Six Months On, There’s Still No Plan.

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.thetrace.org/2021/02/chicago-black-suicide-data-cook-county-mental-health/#new_tab

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In July, a city official told The Trace andthe Sun-Times that the city would be releasing additional funds to address mental health, including several million for the expansion of existing mental health services and $1 million for suicide prevention. The official also said the city would seek proposals for a suicide-prevention plan in late 2020 or early 2021. 

In October, the city announced that more than 30 community-based mental health organizations would receive $8 million in annual grants to expand existing services. However, the grants do not fund suicide prevention specifically. Asked about the status of the city’s suicide-prevention efforts, a spokesperson with the Chicago Department of Public Health declined an interview request and said the agency was “finalizing our planning in regards to what we will be funding.” 

Author(s): Lakeidra Chavis

Publication Date: 19 February 2021

Publication Site: The Trace

WEAK ACCOUNTING STANDARDS ENABLE ILLINOIS BUDGET DEFICITS

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.illinoispolicy.org/weak-accounting-standards-enable-illinois-budget-deficits/

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Bad accounting has helped Illinois politicians avoid balancing the budget for 20 years, despite a constitutional requirement to pass a balanced budget each year. Government accounting standards that fail to offer transparency and accuracy in financial reporting have also contributed to the state’s $260 billion pension crisis, the primary reason Illinois has the lowest credit rating any state has ever received.

The Governmental Accounting Standards Board has proposed changes it calls “improvements” to the accounting standards for governments. However, watchdog groups such as Truth in Accounting have criticized the proposed changes and urged the adoption of more stringent standards that would require governments to balance their budgets the way most businesses are required to do. Illinois has grown accustomed to using lax accounting methods to hide its budget deficits, racking up debt year after year. The state’s taxpayers would benefit from tougher standards that impose fiscal discipline.

Author(s): Justin Carlson

Publication Date: 19 February 2021

Publication Site: Illinois Policy Institute

Keith Gill Drove the GameStop Reddit Mania. He Talked to the Journal.

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/keith-gill-drove-the-gamestop-reddit-mania-he-talked-to-the-journal-11611931696

Excerpt:

The investor who helped direct the world’s attention to GameStop, leading a horde of online followers in a bizarre market rally that made and lost fortunes from one day to the next, says he’s just a normal guy.

“I didn’t expect this,” said Keith Gill, 34 years old, known as “DeepF—ingValue” by fans on Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum and “Dada” by his 2-year-old daughter. He said he didn’t set out to draw the attention of Congress, the Federal Reserve, hedge funds, the media, trading platforms and hundreds of thousands of investors.

“This story is so much bigger than me,” Mr. Gill told The Wall Street Journal in his first interview since the unboxing this week of a volatile new stock-market game. “I support these retail investors, their ability to make a statement.”

Author(s): Julia-Ambra Verlaine and Gunjan Banerji

Publication Date: 29 January 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal

Chief GameStop Tout and Registered Representative Keith Gill, Target of Class Action Suit, at Congressional Hearings Today

Mary Pat Campbell
Chief GameStop Tout and Registered Representative Keith Gill, Target of Class Action Suit, at Congressional Hearings Today

Excerpt:

The filing argues that Gill’s Roaring Kitty/DeepFuckingValue persona was a ruse, intended to hide his status as an industry professional who’d bought GameStop at prices averaging $5. The filing curiously doesn’t include Gill’s (presumably not faked) E*Trade account shots as part of the ruse, since any registered rep is normally required to trade only though his employer.1

The tricky part is that securities fraud, and this is a securities fraud case, requires establishing intent, which the lawyers call scienter, as in knowing in advance that what they were doing was wrong. The fact that Gill has so many securities licenses will make it pretty much impossible for him to pretend that he didn’t know what the relevant rules were. So his defense is likely to rest on “Gee, I thought this was a great trade. How was I to know so many people would agree and make the same bet?”

The filing makes a good go at pre-rebutting that. Even though Gill initially depicted his YouTube channel as being about general financial education, it became more and more fixated on GameStop, with “at least” 56 of 80 presentations devoted to it, and many of them discussing its vulnerability to a short squeeze. Virtually all of his tweets from July 2020 were about GameStop.

Author(s): Yves Smith

Publication Date: 18 February 2021

Publication Site: naked capitalism

Hoist on His Own Petard? Kentucky Attorney General’s Apparent Plan to Settle Landmark Pension Case Mayberry v. KKR Likely to be Undermined by Discovery

Mary Pat Campbell
Hoist on His Own Petard? Kentucky Attorney General’s Apparent Plan to Settle Landmark Pension Case Mayberry v. KKR Likely to be Undermined by Discovery

Excerpt:

Cameron’s filing was almost entirely dependent on the original plantiffs’ documents. It’s become increasingly evident that Cameron never intended to litigate. The best guess is that Cameron needed a distraction from bad Brionna Taylor headlines, and also saw the Mayberry v. KKR case as an opportunity to engage in a little shakedown by making a potentially explosive case go away via a cost-of-doing-business settlement.

But Cameron appears to have badly underestimated his opponents, led by the formidable attorney Michelle Lerach and her husband, the disbarred but still very much feared Bill Lerach, who acts as a consultant. A quick and cheap settlement can occur only if the defendants can escape what they fear most, discovery. But the latest order from Judge Philip Shepherd shows he is moving forward with the reconfigured case, now involving “Tier 3” beneficiaries in a hybrid plan that does not have a state guarantee. That upsets Cameron’s plans to settle the case before the Tier 3 plaintiffs go going, which would allow his to go lowball based on public information and the limited discovery to date.

Author(s): Yves Smith

Publication Date: 19 February 2021

Publication Site: naked capitalism

No rating red flags stand out in Illinois’ proposed budget

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://fixedincome.fidelity.com/ftgw/fi/FINewsArticle?id=202102191505SM______BNDBUYER_00000177-bb7c-d32d-a5f7-bbfd87c10001_110.1#new_tab

Excerpt:

The prospects for new federal aid and a proposed budget that avoids negative rating triggers should preserve Illinois? investment-grade status, but neither moves the needle on the structural and pension albatrosses.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s proposed $95.5 billion fiscal 2022 budget, with a $41.7 billion general fund, clears what was estimated late last year as a $5.5 billion gap, using higher revenue projections and a combination of structural and one-time maneuvers.

In addition to higher tax collections and federal Medicaid matching dollars now expected, the budget holds spending level to fiscal 2021. It raises about $900 million in revenue by curbing corporate tax breaks, keeps some funds earmarked for local governments, the capital fund, and transit agencies and delays repayment of some inter-fund borrowing. It does not rely on an income tax or other general tax increases and it does rely on more federal funds as they are not yet approved.

Author(s): Yvette Shields

Publication Date: 19 February 2021

Publication Site: Fidelity Fixed Income

We’ll Have Herd Immunity by April

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/well-have-herd-immunity-by-april-11613669731

Excerpt:

Amid the dire Covid warnings, one crucial fact has been largely ignored: Cases are down 77% over the past six weeks. If a medication slashed cases by 77%, we’d call it a miracle pill. Why is the number of cases plummeting much faster than experts predicted?

In large part because natural immunity from prior infection is far more common than can be measured by testing. Testing has been capturing only from 10% to 25% of infections, depending on when during the pandemic someone got the virus. Applying a time-weighted case capture average of 1 in 6.5 to the cumulative 28 million confirmed cases would mean about 55% of Americans have natural immunity.

Now add people getting vaccinated. As of this week, 15% of Americans have received the vaccine, and the figure is rising fast. Former Food and Drug Commissioner Scott Gottlieb estimates 250 million doses will have been delivered to some 150 million people by the end of March.

There is reason to think the country is racing toward an extremely low level of infection. As more people have been infected, most of whom have mild or no symptoms, there are fewer Americans left to be infected. At the current trajectory, I expect Covid will be mostly gone by April, allowing Americans to resume normal life.

Author(s): Marty Makary

Publication Date: 18 February 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal

Great news in Illinois on COVID is going underreported, and so is the primary reason – Wirepoints

Mary Pat Campbell
Great news in Illinois on COVID is going underreported, and so is the primary reason – Wirepoints

Excerpt:

Vaccinations, obviously, are starting to make a difference. Over 2.1 million of Illinois’ 12.7 million people have had at least their first vaccination. That’s about 17% of the state.

But something far bigger is at work: the huge number of Illinoisans who have acquired natural immunity because they were already infected, mostly without knowing it. That’s probably over 7.6 million Illinoisans – about 60% of the state.

How can that be? It’s because the actual number of infections is about 6.5 for every reported case because most cases go unreported. That’s the current number used by Marty Makary, a professor at the John Hopkins School of Medicine, who wrote in the Wall Street Journal last week. Illinois has about 1.73 million reported cases, so you just multiply that by 6.5.

The virus, in simple terms, is finding nowhere to go. Far over half of its potential victims are either naturally immune or have been vaccinated.

Author(s): Mark Glennon

Publication Date: 21 February 2021

Publication Site: Wirepoints

Fatal drug overdoses increased by 13% in 2020, with biggest increase during height of pandemic

Mary Pat Campbell
Fatal drug overdoses increased by 13% in 2020, with biggest increase during height of pandemic

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The state saw a 13% increase in fatal drug overdoses in 2020, with most deaths occurring from April to July, when the state was going through the first round of the pandemic.

There were 1,359 fatal overdoses in 2020, with 78 cases still under investigation, according to state Department of Public Health data. In 2019, there were 1,200 deaths.

Author(s): DAVE ALTIMARI

Publication Date: 18 February 2021

Publication Site: CT Mirror

Kentucky Legislature Considers Changes to Teacher Retirement Plan

Mary Pat Campbell
Kentucky Legislature Considers Changes to Teacher Retirement Plan

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The Kentucky House recently passed a state bill that would place newly-hired Kentucky teachers into a new “hybrid” retirement plan design. The new hybrid plan would blend a “foundational” defined benefit pension plan with a “supplemental” defined contribution plan as a means of de-risking the Kentucky Teachers’ Retirement System, which is only 58.4 percent funded today.

The legislation, which is now before the Senate’s State and Local Government Committee, ultimately seeks to control future employee, retiree and taxpayer costs. The Teachers’ Retirement System of Kentucky already has nearly $15 billion in unfunded liabilities.

An actuarial analysis of the bill, House Bill 258, projects that it would save Kentucky $3.57 billion over 30 years. While the legislation is not a panacea, if enacted, it would be a positive step in the right direction for Kentucky’s overall public pension challenges, which rank among the most difficult in the nation.

Author(s): Alix Ollivier

Publication Date: 19 February 2021

Publication Site: Reason