Here’s the question: how much would you pay for an annuity that gave you whatever CPM is going to get out of this? If it’s more than $1.16b then you could say t

Here’s the question: how much would you pay for an annuity that gave you whatever CPM is going to get out of this? If it’s more than $1.16b then you could say the city got a bad deal, but I just don’t think it is. I think it’s likely less, though that’s basing it on this article which is not well-written. 75 years is a long enough time horizon that you could consider the stock market “risk free”. It has never not performed way better than this annuity in that time period, and if it did, it would probably mean something so terrible happened that the money doesn’t matter (or maybe doesn’t exist) anymore. Add to that the fact that Chicago very wall may go bankrupt and default on this. The city already got their billion. There’s a lot less risk the stock market (or take your pick of many alternative places to park a billion) goes to 0 and again if it does, we’re probably talking America having collapsed so the money doesn’t matter anymore anyway. I just don’t see any reasonable set of mathematics where this wasn’t a good deal for the city. And yeah, people don’t like it because it’s costing them more at the meter and 95% of people don’t understand finance or math and they’re really mad that their city is going a poor job of fiscal management. If it weren’t this problem, the city would have had to do something else to raise or save a billion and they’d be mad about that instead.