the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Oct 15, 2012
For the second time this year, Moody’s, the bond rating agency, downgraded the credit rating of the Chicago Public Schools. Fitch, another agency, soon followed suit.
Moody’s first downgrade came in July, after the Fact Finders report came out. That report stated that Chicago teachers needed to be paid for working Emanuel’s longer day.
Now that teachers have won raises with their strike, Moody’s is downgrading the debt once again.
The lower credit rating for CPS means it will pay more money in interest to borrow money–more to the banks, that is. And more money to the banks means less money to Chicago students’ education. Moody’s cited the strike–in other words, the fact that teachers fight back makes CPS a poor investment choice for Moody’s.
No doubt! The big banks, which control Moody’s and Fitch, have targeted the schools as their next big money-making scam. And the teachers’ strike, one of whose aims was to put more teachers in the schools, that is, increase public funding to the schools, interfered with that.