Jamie Dimon: 100 Municipalities Won’t “Make it” Out of Debt

You should probably figure out if you’re in one of them. Take note – this is Dimon trying to put a positive spin on the muni bond market:

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said some municipalities will need to renegotiate debt and a hundred may not “make it.”

“I wouldn’t panic about what I’m about to say,” Dimon, 55, said today at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce event in Washington. “You’re going to see some municipalities not make it. I don’t think it’s going to shatter America, I just think it’s a part of the credit cycle.”

Speculation about widespread municipal-bond defaults intensified in December when bank analyst Meredith Whitney predicted that “hundreds of billions” of dollars of municipal bonds may default in 2011 amid pressure to balance budgets.

JPMorgan, the second-biggest U.S. bank by assets, said in February its commercial bank’s municipal-debt holdings are diversified enough to handle a likely increase in defaults. The number of issuers that can’t manage debts may be about a hundred, Dimon said today.

“It’s not going to be thousands,” he said. “It’s going to be maybe a hundred. It’s going to be a small number” out of roughly 14,000 municipalities.

Only one hundred cities collapsing under debt? Great!

How to prepare for this? Get ready for less services and higher fees and taxes. Put that money away now.

 

Fed Says U.S. “Approaching Insolvency”

And their big plan to help is to incur more debt. Bye-bye America:

The United States is on a fiscal path towards insolvency and policymakers are at a “tipping point,” a Federal Reserve official said on Tuesday.

“If we continue down on the path on which the fiscal authorities put us, we will become insolvent, the question is when,” Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Richard Fisher said in a question and answer session after delivering a speech at the University of Frankfurt.

“The short-term negotiations are very important, I look at this as a tipping point.”

But he added he was confident in the Americans’ ability to take the right decisions and said the country would avoid insolvency.

“I think we are at the beginning of the process and it’s going to be very painful,” he added.

Fisher earlier said the US economic recovery is gathering momentum, adding that he personally was extremely vigilant on inflation pressures.

Fisher added that the U.S. Federal Reserve had ways to tighten its monetary policy other than interest rates, including by selling treasuries, changing reserves levels and using time deposits.

Check out the comments of the CNBC where dozens of communists are claiming that taxing “the rich” and abandoning free trade are the solutions to our financial problems. I have a bad feeling about these people once the food starts to run out.

Earthquake in Flagler County, Florida?

CFNews is reporting that residents of on Florida county believe they were hit by an earthquake this morning, although authorities say there was no recorded seismic activity in the area:

News 13 has received several calls from residents in Flagler County reporting their homes began to shake Friday morning.

Flagler Emergency Operations Center said they are investigating some sort of incident in the Palm Coast area.

The residents said their foundations shook.

Calls came all over Flagler County reporting the “tremor”, however, the United States Geological  Survey reports no seismic activities in the area.

Spokesman Carl Laundrie says Flagler’s emergency operations center received at least nine calls from residents who reported feeling the rumbling Friday.

“At approximately 9:30 a.m. this morning the Flagler County 911 Center received calls from residents of rumbling, trembling, or minor shaking of the ground from Palm Coast and Bunnell. Some reports indicated the sensations were felt, while others reported hearing booming sounds. Emergency Management verified through the United States Geological Survey, the National Weather Service, and the Florida Division of Emergency Management there were no known reports or activities capable of causing this incident. Possible military off-shore activities may have caused these sensations. There is no damage or injuries as a result and therefore no further actions required.”

A Flagler County school official said they will investigate whether area schools felt the rumbling.

News 13 contacted the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, but they are not reporting any bombing range activities.

One resident in the Pine Lakes area reported on News 13’s Facebook page her glass windows and sliding glass door vibrating and said there was an “unmistakable roaring rumbling” noise.

Another reported on Twitter, their windows rattled at around 9:30 a.m.

What was it? Right now no one knows but officially it wasn’t an earthquake. Just a bunch of people who felt the earth quake beneath them.