Investing.com - President-elect Donald Trump today took on Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel for his sub-par performance, noting that the city, whose bond rating last year dropped to junk status, ended 2016 on an even more sordid note: as the murder capital of the world.
"Chicago's murder rate is record-setting," Trump commented on Monday via the Twitter social media platform. "Four-thousand, three-hundred and thirty-one shooting victims with 762 murders in 2016. If Mayor can't do it, he must ask for federal help."
The city has more murders than Los Angeles and New York combined, and last year had 1,100 more shooting incidents than in 2015.
By contrast, the U.S. Pentagon had only 13 civilian casualties, including nine killed in action, last year in Iraq, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.
With the city's municipal bonds last year downgraded to junk bond status, and rated Ba1 by Moody's Investment, the city is perilously close to becoming a failed state, like Somalia, in geopolitical terms, analysts have said.
The mayor of Chicago was a former fundraising aide to Bill and Hillary Clinton, during the 1990s, and was the first Chief of Staff for the outgoing Obama White House back in 2009.
Illegal aliens and illegal guns from Mexico are said to have overtaken the city. Mayor Emanuel has taken a stance that the city will not enforce federal immigration laws and will continue to be a "sanctuary city" for undocumented illegals from Latin America and other foreign countries.
"It is almost like there is a pull-back so they, the gangs, can kill each other," said Rev. Marshall Hatch, a leading minister in the black community in Chicago, told reporters over the weekend, as he, Rev. Jesse Jackson and Fr. Michael Pfleger, among other famous clergy, marched on city hall to demand an end to the violence.
On Wall Street, Chicago has $9.8 billion in general obligation (GO) bonds outstanding and $486 million in sales tax revenue bonds.
Moody's lowered the city's bond rating from Baa2 last March, and has another recalculation of the value of the debt coming up this spring.