The Vig

Phoenix, Atlanta, and Philadelphia have all extended their hands to the government in an effort to get some help with their unfunded pension liabilities.  Jack Bog has been on top of this subject locally and can speak to the subject much better than I.

One other item of note in the Wall Street Journal article was the fact the cities are also looking for help to spur infrastructure improvements.   I wonder how much of a stretch it will be for the city to attempt to place a new baseball stadium under such an umbrella.  You watch.  They’re going to try.  At the very least, giving the city a few billion to either ease up on their pension liabilities or build infrastructure (a new Sellwood bridge would be nice) will free money to go toward building Merritt’s field of dreams.

Retrofitting stadiums or building new ones is not what Congress or the Treasury had in mind for TARP and it should be resisted.  I don’t know how the Feds would be able to stop such a maneuver, but they should.