April 2019 IMET Monthly Newsletter

GFOA Launches Economic Indicator Dashboard

Laurence Msall wrote a column for Crain's Chicago Business, May 8, 2020, asserting that no state or local government can weather this crisis on its own. His argument is that to exclude Illinois, Chicago or other major governments from future rounds of federal relief because of past bad fiscal decisionmaking are misguided and threaten full national economic recovery.

The safety of public funds should be the primary investment objective of all governments.  One of the most important protections and a control against fraud is the separation of the safekeeping function from the investment function.

The Federal Reserve left rates unchanged at its April policy meeting, while its statement addressed the dramatic deterioration of the economic outlook since their last meeting in March and made clear they are “committed to using its full range of tools to support the U.S. economy in this challenging time.” The committee kept the interest rate paid on required and excess reserves unchanged at 0.10%.