You’ve seen the headlines: S&P downgrades Chicago’s credit rating. The mayor proposes a property tax rate hike. CPS and the mayor’s office clash over responsibility for the municipal workers’ pension payment.

A budget war is raging in Chicago, and our press is all over it. But rarely do we confront the deeper questions that underlie the conflict, here and in every other American city: Are we actually broke, and why? Who controls the cash that flows into and out of our cities? Is social democracy, let alone socialism, even possible at the municipal level–or are we destined to forever beg for scraps of state and federal revenue?

Join the Municipal Finance Reading Group as we discuss the introduction and part 1 of Destin Jenkins’ The Bonds of Inequality: Debt and the Making of the American City. Sharing Jenkins’ focus on San Francisco, we’ll investigate the history of municipal debt and its managers, with an eye toward lessons for those who seek to borrow and spend the capital required to build a new Chicago.

This is the first in a three-part series.