New York State's Toxic Spiral: Preparing For The Moody's Axe, As Cash Flow "Crunch" Accelerates

And somehow declaring that a bankrupt state is, gasp, bankrupt is expected to be surprising? At least that is the read of Bloomberg's piece highlighting that the idiots over at Moody's may cut New York's Aa3 rating. What next: a $10 trillion deficit financed exclusively with new debt may force an upgrade of America's AAA rating? Quote Moody's: "The next three months will be critical to the state's credit rating. The rating and outlook reflect the state's current-year projected gap of approximately $3 billion and the deteriorating liquidity in the state's General Fund, and also reflects our expectation that legislature will enact solutions to the budget gap and that revenue collections based on bonus payouts will exceed the state's conservative projections. If there is no action taken by the state to close the gap, or if action is taken but is largely-one-time in nature (therefore increasing the structural imbalance in the outyears), and revenue collections in January are close to or below state projections, the state's situation at that time would likely not be consistent with a Aa3 rating and stable outlook." Which is why NY State comptroller's earlier released report "New York State’s Cash Flow Crunch" will likely do little to improve Moody's skepticism that New York can escape the fiscal abyss so well shown by Arnold to be inescapable. "[B]borrowing to address the State’s deficit would be irresponsible, incurring additional costs and adding to the State’s already high debt burden. As more time goes by without meaningful effort to address the State’s budget problem, the cost of inaction will grow and the consequences will be significantly more severe." So sooner or later New York will also likely end up bankrupt, but at least Goldman et al. have massive NOL carryforwards that will prevent them from paying any state taxes for a considerable amount of time. That and one-way private jet tickets to any non-extradition venue of their choosing.

Full Moody's report:

And an even more dire warning from the comptroller of the state: