But do they take fils?

So, a reader sent me this link .... he asserts, I assume in jest, that this (selling parking meters to a foreign entity) might be the solution to all of Newburyport's financial woes.

The blog post from the the Atlantic Wire screams out the headline "Why Does Abu Dhabi Own All of Chicago's Parking Meters?" This is the first paragraph:

The city of Chicago has 36,000 parking meters. In 2008, it sold them on a 75 year lease for over one billion dollars. The buyers were led by Morgan Stanley. But as Matt Taibbi reports in his forthcoming book Griftopia, previewed in Rolling Stone, the state-owned investment arm of Abu Dhabi ended up owning a large share -- possibility a controlling majority -- in Chicago's parking meter system.

I'm not entirely sure that the words "lease" and "sale" are interchangeable, but ... oh, well.

And since Newburyport is buying only 6 (I believe) pay-and-display kiosks, the city could hardly reap a huge payday from the move ... but, hey, I have contacts in Kuwait!

Methinks the author of that blog was trying to stir up trouble ... something I try never to do ...