Stockton, California, may take the first steps toward becoming the most populous U.S. city to file for bankruptcy next week

Posted on February 24, 2012 by maxkeiser| 10 Comments

Pension promises made to city workers are “similar to a Ponzi scheme,” Deis said at Stockton’s City Hall. He said the city has a $450 million unfunded liability for retirement costs.

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10 Responses to Stockton, California, may take the first steps toward becoming the most populous U.S. city to file for bankruptcy next week

  3. proxyoflove | February 25, 2012 at 12:20 am |

    @ motherearth, yes, interesting. It’s why my whole philosophy has boiled down to this. We really do have two brains. A primal fear/craving brain (invisible philia/phobia where craving – philia – is the unquenchable inverse reflection of fear; i.e greed is a response to over-securitise against a fear of insecurity; vanity is a fear of rejection etc.). And a cognitive emotional brain where we choose our values (free will) in order to care.. love. Therefore love isn’t blind at all. Mirror mirror on the wall.

    The war ahead is the the war between love and fear, just as Bill Hicks said. Psychopaths vs humanity. And I know M&S are the real deal because they display no vanity at all. After all, ego is the agent of self-doubt; fear. True self is the agent of self-acceptance; love. Hate is ok after all. It helps us define what we care for. Emotion is our birthright, not manipulated programming of fear and craving.

    I babble this message at every opportunity because it is so simple. So obvious. Yet so muddied by poor philosophy, like Freud who was a coke-head, Nietzsche who was a misanthrope, and Jung who was too analytical.

    Evil? Psychopaths? The people who cognitively use fear/craving to oppress love and get a kick out of it. There are many shades of that grey.

  4. Sandra | February 25, 2012 at 12:24 am |

    That’s really sad. I always feel most sorry for the old folks who lose their pensions after a lifetime of honest, hard work, in the instance that a city goes bankrupt.

    On another note:
    “Cartel Dumps 102.5 Million Ounces of Paper Silver in 7 Minutes, Yet RAID FAILS!”
    http://silverdoctors.blogspot.com/2012/02/cartel-dumps-1025-million-ounces-of.html

    …and the SLA gets a mention in one or two of the comments

  5. proxyoflove | February 25, 2012 at 12:26 am |

    Even Noam can talk the occasional nonsense eh Youri? heh heh. Trying to get a rise on that one ;)

  7. proxyoflove | February 25, 2012 at 12:31 am |

    Stockton… not quite as bad as Fresno. Stockton may be in the shit, but Fresno constantly has that odour. Hwy 5, the cows. pooey.

  8. proxyoflove | February 25, 2012 at 12:39 am |

    Didn’t mean to be flippant there, Stockton will likely become a model for how to steal promisary pensions.

  9. 1971 | February 25, 2012 at 1:14 am |

    You could tell Stockton was going under when the city hall idiots paid Neal Diamond 1 Million dollars for one concert, just to open the new downtown arena in 2006. At least the stupid fuckers didn’t give Neal a million ounces of Silver. I don’t think they know what silver is.

  10. MEJ | February 25, 2012 at 2:40 am |

    Heard on the local news today that 80 pct of Stockton’s expenses are for fire and police. They made the mistake a couple years ago of greatly increasing pay and retirement benefits, plus allowing vesting in the retirement after 1 month of work. Not sure if I heard all that correctly, but it seems the “reasonable” things the city council did when times were good are turning around and biting them when times are bad. I am sure they are looking at bankruptcy as a possible way to help them renegotiate those contracts.