This is (yet another) completely explosive story, at least for all y’all U.S. folks. Real estate taxes have been systematically over-applied through the practice of over-valuing property.
The only requirement to be touched by the massive fraud revealed by Mitch Vexler is to own or rent any real property in the States.
It’s quite possibly entirely ruinous to vast tranches of the US municipal bond market. As is typical, the putative regulators and the supposed rating agencies are not on the job protecting US citizens or investors.
Mitch and I met at the Limitless Expo Conference in Dallas. He attended my talk and I happened to put up a slide showing US total debt expanding exponentially at a far higher rate than GDP.
He excitedly approached me proclaiming that my chart was the same as his, only his was a fractal representation showing the growth in school bond debt within a single Texas county as compared to household income.
“As above, so below.”
It’s all interconnected. One mirrors the other.
In other words, there’s an enormous train wreck coming to local budgets. As you well know, one cannot continually expand one’s debt load at a faster pace than one’s income growth. It’s a math problem, but one that has somehow become “just how things are done.”
Well, not so fast, says Mitch. The practices are completely illegal and fraudulently performed. In many cases, for which has the data to prove it, the local budget authorities simply gave the real estate appraisal firms the number they needed to make their preferred budget work and the appraisers would simply goal-seek that number.
Holy smokes!
This is truly one of the largest scams in US history and if it gets undone in the courts – as it should – then there’s a world of hurt coming to the Muni bond market, to local finances, and (hopefully) to the careers of the legion of fraudsters who have been draining their fellow citizens dry.