Those states actually make the money the US lives off.
I've heard of Cali's demise for decades . Yet there it is ! With one of the worlds biggest economies.
Yea let's ignore numbers, I mean, they don't actually mean anything right?
The number the ratings agencies are most interested in are the number and frequencies of insolvencies, such as the issuance of IOUs by Grey and the Governator
The next big number of interest is ease of tax flight and proposed taxes.
Then total liabilities including contingent liabilities.
Those three numbers are extremely bad, even worse than IL in most analyses, and they are generally getting worse over time.