Will Illinois Be America’s Greece?

The chief fiscal officer of tax-and-spend Illinois is preparing to warn lenders that allowing it to borrow any more money would be a major risk. Will his be the first state to go bankrupt?

Treasurer Dan Rutherford is a Republican in a very blue state, and the usual critics will say his warning is political grandstanding. We think the guy who counts Illinois’ money has simply embraced fiscal reality and sanity in shouting from the financial rooftops: “Don’t help us anymore; we can’t afford it.”

Rutherford on Monday said the state was in a deep hole and needed to stop digging and that he was willing to contact all the major bond houses and warn them that lending Illinois more money would be a “major risk.”

“If I need to send letters to the rating companies to tell them the treasurer of Illinois is opposed to more borrowing, I’m going to do it,” Rutherford said. “We need to cut our spending and break our unsustainable borrowing cycle before we realize a further financial disaster.”…

Read the rest at Investors.com.


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