State Budgets and the Recession

State debt woes grow too big to camouflage, By Mary Williams Walsh, March 29, 2010, New York Times: “California, New York and other states are showing many of the same signs of debt overload that recently took Greece to the brink – budgets that will not balance, accounting that masks debt, the use of derivatives to plug holes, and armies of retired public workers who are counting on benefits that are proving harder and harder to pay. And states are responding in sometimes desperate ways, raising concerns that they, too, could face a debt crisis…”