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Exploring the origins of Illinois's toxic debt crisis.

Feb 20 2016
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There are internal Bank of America memos from 2007 where they say they know the market is headed for a meltdown. And after those memos are written, they sold the same deals to Chicago Public Schools. This isn't just bets that happened to go badly. The bets were rigged from the get go. The banks rigged the system in such a way that they were protected no matter what, and all the risk was shifted onto taxpayers.

Municipal finance analyst Saqib Bhatti explains why Illinois is shredding social programs for families and workers to continue making illegal payments on fraudulent Wall Street deals, and how both state governor Bruce Rauner and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel have sanctified the public's obligations to pay debt above government's obligations to provide services for taxpayers.

Saqib studied the state's interest rate swap disaster in the ReFund America report Turned Around.

 

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Guest

Saqib Bhatti

Saqib Bhatti is a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and the Director of the ReFund America Project.

 

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