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Comment by mahyarm | Hacker News Reader

More like the market made something that should be more expensive cheaper due to crony behavior.

Ironically the creditors are going to force the city to face FTA potentially 10-25% yearly increases in sewer rates, they'll never make their money back because the portable toilet distributor is going to start selling water by the drum too.

Once people see their neighbour doing it, they'll do it. Especially when it's potentially saving them hundreds of dollars. So then the creditors will want hikes of 50-100% annually.

It's an awful mess of crooks and greed. I don't get why the creditors decided to fight these people in court and add in legal expenses when they could have just said "we'll cut the interest rate if you pay over a longer term".

I'm sorry but my business mind tells me that some money is better than no money.

Looks like the bankers did agree to forgive $1 billion and refinance another $2 billion. The higher rates are part of the plan to avoid bankruptcy even under those terms, though.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44552659/ns/us_news-life/#.TulFl...

Given that the budget was set at $300 million, any payments over $1 billion are absurd by even the worst crooks in regular government.

A 1000% markup on a project should be illegal however it happens. Sorry, if a company wants to overrun the same should apply as to my mechanic 30% above estimate and you pay the rest. Government would have paid $400 million, sounds about right for a cost overrun to me, not $3 billion.

Actually that settlement fell through. Per Bloomberg, "The county’s efforts to negotiate a definitive settlement were frustrated by the recent sale of sewer debt to investors who didn’t want to restructure the bonds under the terms of the September agreement, according to the bankruptcy filing."

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-09/alabama-s-jefferson...

Some money slowly over time isn't strictly better than no money that can't [oops: can] be written off immediately.

The market made something that should be cheaper more expensive. Making that other thing that is also expensive now the cheapest option. Nothing got "cheaper" here.

Specifically thats true. General idea is the same.

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