The World Socialist Website has published a rebuttal to a Dec. 31 wall Street Journal story about the need to “discipline” Stockton and other “deadbeats.”
“They scold the city and the city’s financiers like a mafia loan shark,” the article sizzles.
It goes on to offer an accurate diagnosis. “…wealthy investors … have become increasingly anxious about the bets they made on the bond market … before the global economic crisis of 2008. The editor writes, “Ratings agencies downplay the ’systemic risk’ that the Stocktons of the United States pose to the $3.7 trillion municipal bond market. But then they also said mortgage-backed securities were Triple-A… Bondholders face a very real danger of being blown off to preserve worker pensions.”
Its political perspective is not without merit, either. “The attack on workers in Stockton is part of a bipartisan policy to force the working class to pay for the capitalist crisis.”
My earlier take on that WSj article here.
M profile of the socialist writer — he’s a Stocktonian — here.
Incidentally, the socialists are giving a talk about Stockton’s bankruptcy tonight at 6:00 pm at University of the Pacific’s Wendell Phillips Center, 1000 W. Stadium Drive, Room 219.
