Opportunity to buy Illinois bonds that can never default?
"Can't declare bankruptcy isn't the same as ""can't default"".  Bankruptcy is a specific legal process for discharging or restructuring debts.  If Illinois can't declare bankruptcy, that means it will still owe you the money for the bonds no matter what, but it doesn't guarantee that it will actually pay you what it owes. If Illinois should run out of money to pay what's due on its bonds, then it will default.  Unlike the federal government, Illinois can't print money to make the payments." "If Illinois cannot go bankruptcy This is missing a few, very important words, ""...under current law.""   The United States changed the law so as to allow Puerto Rico to go into a form of bankruptcy.  So you cannot rely on a lack of legal support for bankruptcy to protect any bond investments you might make in Illinois.  It is entirely possible for the federal government to add a law enabling a state to discharge its debts through a bankruptcy process.  That's why the bonds have been downgraded.  They are still fine now, but that could change at any time.   I don't want to dive too deep into the politics on this stack, but I could quite easily see a bargain between US President Donald Trump and Democrats in Congress where he agreed to special privileges for pension debts owed to former employees in exchange for full discharge of all other debts.  That would lead to a complete loss of value for the bonds that you are considering.  There still seem to be other options now, but they seem to be getting closer and closer to that." If you give money to a person or entity, and they don't have the ability to pay you back, it doesn't matter if they are legally required to pay you. "Sovereign immunity is the state's ultimate ""get out of bankruptcy free"" card.  After all, the state has a hand in defining what bankruptcy even is in their state.  Federal law is a framework, states customize it from there.   The state's simplest tactic is to simply not pay you.  And leave you scrambling to the courthouse for redress. Is that an automatic win?  Not really, the State can plead sovereign immunity, e.g. Hans v. Louisiana, Alden v. Maine.     You could try to pierce that sovereign immunity, essentially you'd be in Federal court trying to force the state into bankruptcy.  This would pit State authority against Federal authority.  The Feds are just as likely to come in on the state's side, and you lose.  Best scenario, it's a knock-down drag-out all the way to the Supreme Court.  You would have to be one heck of a creditor for the legal fees to be worth your trouble.  States don't make a habit of this because if they did, no one would lend money to them, and this would be rather bad for the economy all around.  So business and government work really hard to avert it.  But it always stands as their ""nuclear option"".  And you gotta know that when loaning money to States."
Actually, you're missing the key feature of CDOs.  Most CDOs use (much to our economic misery, ultimately) a system call tranching.  To simplify this idea, I'll make a two tranch example.  Suppose I buy mortgages covering a face value of $120,000,000.  Because they are subprime, if I just put them in a pool and finance them with bonds, the rating will be lousy and most investors will shun them (at least investors who are safety oriented).  What I do is divide them into two tranches.  One bond issue is for $100,000,000 and another for $20,000,000.  The idea is that any defaulting mortgage comes out of the latter bond issue.  I'll probably keep these bonds (the lower tranch).  Thus buyers of the first issue are safe unless defaults exceed $20,000,000.  Then the rating agencies rate the first issue AAA and it gets snapped up by investors.  In a strict sense it is overcollateralized, basically the entire $120,000,000 backs up the first bond issue. In reality, many CDOs had multiple tranches, with the lowest tranch being retained by the underwriters and the other tranches sold as bonds of various ratings. I'd personally use a standard brokerage account and invest in a mix of mutual funds, ETFs and individual stocks.  Follow the municipal bond markets and be prepared to move into muni funds or ETFs when opportunities present themselves. If you buy on weakness, you can pull some great returns with reasonably safe investment. When you invest in an ETF or mutual fund, you're not investing in stocks or bonds. You're buying shares of a company that invests in stocks or bonds. This level of indirection is what makes it so bond funds do not 'mature.' Bonds inside of ETFs or mutual funds do have a maturity date. When they mature, the fund manager uses the principal value that is returned to purchase another bond that meets the investment objectives of the fund. So the fund never matures, since it is always investing in more bonds when the old ones mature. Unit investment trusts made of bonds do have a maturity date as well, since the portfolio does not change once the UIT is issued. As the individual bonds in the portfolio mature, the principle value is returned to investors. So the overall maturity date is effectively the maturity date of the last bond in the trust. All of the statements quoted above are accurate in explaining why there is no guarantee of a return of principle when investing in bond funds (ETF or open-ended mutual fund). The bonds they hold do mature, but are replaced within the fund as needed. The investor will never see it happen unless they watch the holdings reports filed by the funds.  The only way to have an assurance of the return of principle is to invest in individual bonds, or in unit trusts made up of bonds. Haven't there been examples of governments defaulting, delaying payment and imposing haircuts on investors? Greece and Argentina come to mind. Quite a few Govt have defaulted in the past or were very of default or crisis. Most 3rd world countries or developing countries have under gone stress at some point. Greece was amongst the first example of Developed country going bankrupt. am I not better off if the fund invests solely in AAA corporate bonds, avoiding government bonds? Well that depends. Corporate bonds are not safer than Government Bonds. There have been instances of Corporate bonds not giving the required returns. "For real. AAA treasury bonds are used a safe investment vehicle for the reason of ""its the US government, its safe"", which is pretty similar to the ""dude, who doesnt pay their mortgage?!"" line of thinking.      You got people dumping money into these derivatives and suddenly someone goes ""oh yeah you just bought a bunch of bad debt that should be rated 'junk'. Oops.""" "Ok, now if someone could explain to my why Argentina didn't do the following:  * Set out a schedule of payments for the 100% of the debt, and pay everybody (Mr. Singer included);  * When they hit the haircut % amount, declare ""default"".  The parties that had agreed to the haircut would be fine, as they had already agreed to the haircut.   Mr. Singer would be left out to dry for the rest of the money, due to the default.   It would technically count as a default, but only the vulture-funds would experience the actual default, and so the markets would see that haircuts for the majority actually apply for everybody, and henceforth encouraging all bond-holders to negotiate hair-cuts rather than encourage vultures to buy nonds for a nickle and demand the full dollar." Usually Bonds are used to raised capital when a lender doesn't want to take on sole risk of lending. If you are looking at raising anything below 10m bonds are not a option because the bank will just extend you a line of credit. "This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/could-illinois-be-the-first-state-to-file-for-bankruptcy/) reduced by 90%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; A financial crunch is spiraling into a serious problem for Illinois lawmakers, prompting some observers to wonder if the state might make history by becoming the first to go bankrupt.  &gt; At the moment, it&amp;#039;s impossible for a state to file for bankruptcy protection, which is only afforded to counties and municipalities like Detroit.  &gt; As for Illinois, Rauner on Thursday called state legislators to a 10-day special session starting next week to hammer out a budget deal and end an unprecedented impasse that could soon enter a third year.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6hq2wx/could_obamas_illinois_be_the_first_state_to_file/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~146184 tl;drs so far."") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr ""PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome."") | *Top* *keywords*: **state**^#1 **pension**^#2 **Illinois**^#3 **year**^#4 **bankruptcy**^#5"