The undercurrent to all his conversations will be this: Regardless of the measures local officials take, the economic fate of cities are tied to the whims of the White House and Congress and the macroeconomic levers they control.
As with the new facility, loans were only available to countries which the fund deemed to have sound macroeconomic policies but which were affected by factors outside their control, so to be stigma-free.
We are now at one of those moments in financial history where the tensions between disciplined and talented CEOs (and no, not all CEOs are disciplined or talented) are being challenged by a number of macroeconomic conditions that are largely out of their hands to control.