State Muni Bonds

Finance
#1

The pandemic is doing a number on state munis as their revenue streams are being slashed. The states are pleading for a Federal bailout even as Mitch McConnell has said he would prefer they go bankrupt. Well . . . . .

Unlike Uncle Sam the individual states cannot just print funny money. Nevertheless states do not go bankrupt per se. Instead they default on their bonds . . . . which you do not want to be holding at that point.

Forbes addresses the situation in this article from last Sunday. Each state is listed along with its current Moodyā€™s rating. Some of them will surprise you. Even if youā€™re not holding state paper currently, you might be interested to learn how your state is rated.

Check Out Your Stateā€”And Maybe Sell Its Tax-Exempt Bonds

I owned a large pile of muni bonds years ago; made good money and never suffered a default. Theyā€™re all long gone now. And Iā€™m not buying any more. :wink:

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#2

This is an automatically-generated Wiki post for this new topic. Any member can edit this post and use it as a summary of the topicā€™s highlights.

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#3

Good reminder and good linked article. I donā€™t have any municipal bonds in my portfolio (nor any intention to get any considering the super low yields) but appreciate the heads up.

#4

Todayā€™s rich people buy munis to escape taxation. Munis are worth less when taxes are (relatively) lower, more should taxation generally escalate. The secret is to anticipate what might lie ahead for taxes and buy your munis before prices rise . . . if they are gonna rise. For example:

I you think the pandemic is imposing a lot of extra cost everywhere, and if you believe Democrats will be successful in November, especially in Congress to where they gain control, then for some people this might be a time to consider munis. As taxes rise, if they do, your munis will be worth more.

Course the opposite is also true. When taxes fall munis are worth less. Given everything thatā€™s happening out there, Iā€™m not expecting taxes to fall any time soon. But you never know.

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#5

I couldnā€™t find a list of the states from the link you gave. Is there something I missed there? They gave links to other sites but those didnā€™t have a simple table.

I did find this list showing pension obligation and debts as a % of personal incomes :

Look at it as a % of incomes puts it into better perspective than the % unfunded rate or the raw $ Billions owed.

It has combination of pensions, retiree healthcare and other debt.
Retiree healthcare is possibly separate from the pensions and those future costs can be worse than the pensions.

Oregon is surprisingly low to me given how much people act like our pension is bankrupting our state.

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#6

Broadly I agree this is an additional stress to state budgets, many of which were poorly managed to begin with largely stemming from over promising and under funding of pension benefits. For those states with poor finances, including but not limited to NY, NJ, CT, IL off the top of my head, I would definitely avoid their munis. The extra yield, even tax free should you be so lucky to be in a high tax bracket, seems unlikely to be competitive with chasing good bank accounts or CDs for example, and certainly not on a risk adjusted basis.

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#7

Muni bonds are like picking up pennies in front of a steamroller. If it comes down to screwing bondholders or screwing unionized public sector government retirees, the bondholders will get screwed.

People buying NJ and IL debt may get ultimately get bailed out by Uncle Sam. I think it will be a big mistake as it will create massive moral hazard, but I think it will happen. Buying these bonds and hoping for a bailout is not investing however, it is speculating.

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#8

Sorry you had difficulty.

If you scroll way down, the states are listed in groups, alphabetically:

First group: Alabama - Connecticut

Second Group: Delaware - Indiana

and so forth on through all the states.

You have to click on the group names and then you will able to see the individual states.

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#9

OK I got it now. Before I kept scrolling past those thinking they were just links to other discussions or something.

#10

So in that original article I go straight to Oregon and they say that weā€™ve got a pension shortfall of $62 billion.

Most recent data for Oregon is about a year old and at $26B.

So who knows where Forbes got their figuresā€¦
I see at Forbes it says: ā€œPension shortfall is an estimate of what the underfunding would be if obligations were discounted using recent U.S. Treasury rates.ā€

I donā€™t know what that means really. Sounds like Forbes is cooking up numbers on their own by applying a historically low interest rate.

Doesnā€™t matter too much in the end the OP point is still the sameā€¦ state government budgets are in real jeopardy today and munis are at risk.

#11

Another data point, the FOrbes article has WA at $81B unfunded liability.

The most recent published data is at $11B for WA from 2018:
http://leg.wa.gov/osa/presentations/Documents/Valuations/18AVR/2018.FINAL.AVR.pdf

#12

Back in my day people did not worry about state credits failing. And of course even now a large number of the states are fiscally responsible and highly rated. But itā€™s best now to pick and choose.

Years ago we had the Whoops bonds, four and five I believe it was (the others were dollar good), we had NYC but they were bailed out by the MAC, there was one city or county entity in California that defaulted I recall, rather than properly burden its own citizens, and of course you always worried about hospital bonds back then.

But states!! Heck, no. Most were very reliable.

I bought munis as I was coming up, lots of cats and dogs, small pieces I could pick up inexpensively. It was long before the internet. I used to call individual dealers I had cultivated and knew personally. When they had that annoying five or ten bond piece, priced right that nobody else wanted to bother with, I was there to help them unload it . . . . sort of like a garbage collector. :smiley:

Kept track of everything on my computer at work. I controlled the entire system so it was easy after everyone else had left for the day to slip in my bond floppy (it was huge), update all my bond records, remove the floppy, and nobody ever was any the wiser. Great fun!

And back then I had a local bank which did not charge to process coupons. Yeah, actual PAPER coupons attached to the bonds and you went in and clipped 'em with scissors, put them into a special coupon deposit envelope, and deposited the money easy peasy . . . . and all tax free, of course.

Boy, those were the days; now long gone. But it was fun while it lasted. :wink:

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#13

8 inch ?

:wink:

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#14

At least.

#15

Also at most, since 8" was the first and biggest.

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#16

Yeah, I really do not remember. It was such a long time ago.

I think that old computer might have had core memory. But, again, I donā€™t really remember. I do recall large interchangeable platters of some sort, which I think were our ā€œhard disksā€. You could either put work on one of those platters or on a floppy. My personal file was small. A floppy worked fine.

#17

This sentence is oddly funny to me.

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#18

Those were likely tapes.

Like big old reel to reel recordings for computers. The early ones used big reels of magnetic tape.

#19

I never knew there were floppy bigger than 5 1ā„4. Even those I barely destroā€¦err used any in my brotherā€™s C64. Canā€™t say I miss them much lol.

#20

Fed will be buying muni bonds. So know the question is are there any ā€œdealsā€ now that we have a backstop?