Political Horizons: On finances, Bobby Jindal counts at-bats as home runs

At least one entry in the “Boring But Important” category has to be the Herculean effort the Jindal administration has put into keeping the influential New York credit rating agencies from downgrading Louisiana’s finances.

Complex analysis of high finance doesn’t get a lot of clicks, but how Moody’s Investors Services, Fitch Ratings and Standard & Poor’s Financial Services — the Big Three — rank Louisiana is of utmost importance, not only to taxpayers but to Gov. Bobby Jindal’s political ambitions.

State government borrows millions — in the form of bonds sold to investors that are repaid by taxpayers — to pay for expensive projects like highway expansions and building construction. How much taxpayers have to repay is based, in large part, on the credit rating the Big Three give.

Think of that television commercial in which the wife of the cute couple applying for a mortgage to buy a home plants her feet on the banker’s desk and demands “What else can you do for me?”

Read more: http://theadvocate.com/news/12998704-123/political-horizons-on-finances-jindal