If any reader has a photo of the ongoing extravaganza sign situation, please email something to post.
It's the biggest construction activity for a quite a while that is not largely or in whole attributable to "Jim Deal" initiative(s).
Also, it is Darren's biggest score, so far, building-wise. The man is ambitious and aims high.
US debt, Strib reporting, here.
The State's status, this item.
Hennepin County debt, Strib reporting, here.
City of Blaine has had good news over a year ago, this link, but I know of nothing more recent.
The City of Ramsey's newest debt rating, as I understand things, is an awaited story. One rating agency has been reviewing the city's records and status but has not reached any reported conclusions and rating decision, again, if I recall things correctly.
A grain of salt - Those rating agencies put high ratings on housing syndication, throughout all the times of "subprime" being a buzzword (one not used as much these days); but while the "subprime debt worry" discussions were having a heyday before the worse of things actually happened - and, into the melt-down phase - the rating agencies were in denial, as to the truth, and as to their ratings having been kited for whatever reasons, where we can guess money changed hands.
This link. Same sentiment online elsewhere.
So - what's it mean - bond rating in the town of Ramsey - that north metro town holding onto the shame of its Ramsey Town Center? (That sadly rebranded thing, with new taped-on signage-plumage inside and at the periphery, for display like some synthetic peacock. That renaming being akin to renaming Darren, "Merlin," which does not cut much, as too dull absent fabled magic.)
It means the cost of bonding goes up if the rating agencies [or likely if even one of them] may downgrade the "quality" of Ramsey municipal bonds [alternatively, the "risk" of holding Ramsey muni-bonds may be viewed greater by the rating authority, hence adding a risk premium to the underlying cost of borrowing in the tax-free muni marketplace].
HISTORY - I need to exchange email with Ms. Lund, Ramsey's CFO, about the latest in bond-rating status. I can post a report of what I learn. Until then, two items, about the past, and between them showing an upward trend in rating, i.e., a downward trend is "riskiness" as weighed by the almighty rating gods of Wall Street. Two thumbnails - A 1993 image, and a current city website screenshot about 2009:
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| A scaling guess, parant and child. |
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Source of opening image, Ramsey Resident, May-June, 2011, p.3. This is guessing, but a normal sized person standing next to DARREN'S BIG SIGN would be the height of two, perhaps three lines of text in that image. Not a Giza scale, not a Trade Center scale, and perhaps I overestimate the thing's actual height, since it is guessed at while driving past at highway speed. In any event it's more cash, same rathole.
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That sign, it sure will be ...
If you cost it out at dollars per drive-by, it even can be made to look inexpensive, and less excessive, wasteful, and stupid. If ...
Anyway, the S-&-P handwaving about downgrading our treasured US of A, and its treasured treasuries, online here. They started with a result, and appear to have written an after-the-fact justification, saying folks in Washington are fiddling way too much while Ron Paul is the one making sense in saying the banks are robbing people, vs. the CRIME, people robbing the banks.
And - The Republicans, I guarantee, will NOT run Ron Paul.
In closing, do you think the bond business is solely to make the Germans look good by comparison while they beat up on the Greeks, and ditto possibly for the French and Brits while they beat up on Libya where its sovereign leadership wanted to trade oil on a gold standard and where the "rebels" as one of their first acts formed a rump central bank? A central bank, as in taking it to the streets with our own central bank.
A head-scratcher? Yes and no?