If anything, the lingering real estate slide should have taught us all that the good times do not necessarily roll on forever and there can be harsh risks associated with borrowing on hope. Yet among our representatives that lesson seems lost. Rather than being leery of debt they just double down thinking our luck will change.
Over the last six months we’ve heard plans to borrow 10 M for this, 6 M for that, a few million for incidentals, and 22 M to biomass heat it all. This all based on the oodles of “free money” arriving soon from just beyond the rainbow. But since itchy fingers can’t wait, the plan is to “bond” now and pay later.
Unfortunately, the ultimate collateral for government bonds is not some distant pot of gold but rather, it is us. In a default, county employment and services are cut. County assets can be sold at auction and we the people bear the burden of repayment through taxes increased enough to cover the remainder. That’s 40 Mil spread over 5000 or for a city-based PUC bio-debt that’s 22 Mil over 700 … that’s hot water indeed.
Surely not here? Well memory recalls, an Art Center that could not meet its fiscal promises, nor a golf course debt that for twenty years bit at the ankles and never seemed to be able to find enough green for all those green dreams. Rates couldn’t be better now? Well of course, because no one else is foolish enough to borrow in a downturn. Like investing in ice cubes on the Titanic.
When the more sober step up to participate, central planning whines about how grueling it is to hear the truth over fiction and feverishly seeks ways to eviscerate the First Amendment. After all “money is at play” and the coffee shop blather of the lowly should not distract the anointed.
Is there no one awake at the wheel to consider the potential jeopardy they are committing us all to? Tough, I guess, to slow a party bus steered by the starryeyed.
Vilnis Neilands
Grand Marais
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