It’s So Bad in Illinois Its Bonds Pay Like a Reviled Jersey Mall
- American Dream yields only slightly above worst-rated state
- State remains a better buy than the mall: AllianceBernstein
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Illinois’s finances are so troubled that investors can make nearly as much money betting on the worst-rated U.S. state as they can on the American Dream mall project, perhaps the most despised structure in New Jersey.
An unfinished, multicolored hulk in the Meadowlands beside the Turnpike, former Governor Chris Christie called it “the ugliest damn building in New Jersey, and maybe America.” Yet bondholders are asking to get paid nearly as much to own Illinois’s debt as they are demanding in return for holding the long-delayed mall’s unrated revenue bonds -- a consequence of the state’s perennial budget distress that’s left it teetering near junk grade.