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With $3.2 billion in debt, the county that is home to Alabama’s largest city is about to go bust. How the credit crisis went South.
(Fortune Magazine) — Bob Riley wanted to help. It was Sunday, Oct. 5, and the Alabama governor was on the phone with Neel Kashkari, a Treasury Department official who the next day would be named by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson as interim leader of the government’s just-approved $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. But Riley couldn’t wait for Kashkari’s role to become official. He needed to impress upon the new bailout boss the seriousness of the exploding financial crisis in Jefferson County, home to Birmingham. Riley argued that it was urgent that the federal government come to the aid of his state - now.
As he would describe it in a follow-up letter to Kashkari, the situation in Jefferson County was “the single biggest threat to the municipal bond market today and a poster child for how the subprime mortgage crisis is hurting Main Street America.”
For months now, Riley and other civic leaders in Alabama have been battling to avert what appears almost certain - that Jefferson County will file for Chapter 9 protection, in what would be the largest municipal bankruptcy in our nation’s history. The county has fallen hopelessly behind on payments to service the $3.2 billion it borrowed - on reckless terms - from Wall Street over the past decade to build a new sewer system. As Fortune went to press, the Jefferson County Commission was days away from a vote that could make the bankruptcy official.
Tags: Alabama, bankruptcy, Credit Crisis, credit crunch, Economy, Government, Henry Paulson, JPMorgan, mortgage crisis, Mortgages, Politics, Treasury, U.S., Wall Street
