I might be alone here, but the entire state of Illinois seems to be run like a lot of 2nd and 3rd world countries. We have rampant corruption, rigged elections, political seats being sold, Blago, Rahm, Daley, etc etc etc. Anyway, the latest piece of news is from the Atlantic and it's a little weird.
The city of Chicago has 36,000 parking meters. In 2008, it sold them on a 75 year lease for over one billion dollars. The buyers were led by Morgan Stanley.
So basically Morgan Stanley found a bunch of investors, including themselves, to put up over a billion dollars in December 2008; a big chunk of those investors then bailed out to make way in February 2009 for this Deeside Investments, which was 49.9 percent owned by Abu Dhabi and 50.1 percent owned by a company called Redoma SARL, about which nothing was known except that it had an address in Luxembourg.
This is a "bait and switch" pulled by Morgan Stanley on Chicago. He explains why this is about more than just parking meters. Now if city officials want to do anything that might disrupt parking meter revenue -- let's say close down parking for a street festival or parade -- they need to get the approval of those meters' shadowy, foreign owners.
In classic Chicago style, the City Council wasn't even informed of this prior to closing, Mayor Daley made it on his own. That's just the way things work out there.
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