Wednesday, February 24, 2010

"Visualizing The Black Hole Of State Revenues"

Lifted from ZeroHedge:

The following chart from Stateline will be quite critical to evaluate going forward as states increasingly ponder just how to tweak their revenue formulas in order to not only get away from the precipice of insolvency, but to pay back the tens of billions borrowed from the Federal government to fund unemployment pay.

And as for the abovementioned borrowings to fund unemployment insurance payments, the Post and Courier has the following story highlighting that not only are states in the red, they also have a $31 billion hold to repay to Uncle Sam....MORE

Stateline isn't kidding. Here's an AP headline via BusinessWeek:
"Washington state Senate Dems want sales tax hike"

Via Calculated Risk:
"From the Rockefeller Institute: States Reported Fifth Consecutive Drop in Tax Collections in the Fourth Quarter of 2009"

From AlterNet: "Cities Shortening Yellow Traffic Lights for Deadly Profit"

HT for the last two to the Columbia Journalism Review's The Audit blog.