There’s all these cities in trouble—budget gaps, revenue shortfalls, and unexpected increases in the amount cities have to pay to banks for creative financial products.  It’s a dodgy time right now because policemen that retired at 50 at full salary, who still have their service weapons, may lose their pensions.

There is even talk of bankruptcy. Bankruptcy?

The banks would not have encouraged cities to expose themselves to that much debt had they not been certain that the people could be squeezed hard enough to get them their money back, with interest.  You are a community—nay a nation of Americans that must band together, adapt, survive, and above all else—NOT DECLARE BANKRUPTCY!

In bankruptcy, you can make bondholders…people like me… take a haircut—and that is something that seems incredibly unacceptable and unpatriotic.

There are plenty of ways to keep paying interest.  Harrisburg Pennsylvania—they stepped up and cancelled kindergarten, Scranton PA just put all city employees on minimum wage, Chicago leased their parking meters (through us, in a very nifty deal) and NYC is thinking about it (Bloomberg—Salamon brothers)—now that is kind of ingenuity we’re talking about.

Cancel your kids’ education, pay police and firefighters the same as a burger flipper at McDonalds, and sell us all your revenue generating assets.

It’s the truly responsible thing to do.  I am not saying it is easy, but think about it as a character building exercise.