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Strategies & Market Trends : MDA - Market Direction Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: James F. Hopkins who wrote (83889)	6/15/2003 11:55:22 AM
From: Hawkmoon	Respond to of 99985

If we are going to look at cash available, it would also be prudent to look at ( debt levels ).. Agreed. But much of that debt existed previously, with higher interest rates. But since the Fed has facilitated that debt being refinanced at lower rates, that can unlock some hidden reserves that can be deployed to either pay down that debt, or (in the case of home mortgages) be deployed elsewhere. As for accounting tricks, they have always existed. But when it comes down to brass tacsk, the question is whether they can pay their debt obligations. But what I sense is that many state governments took the recent capital gains related tax revenue booms as being a permanent situation. Or more cynically, politicians in charge at the time used that surplus money to increase permanent staff and the size of their government (Jobs program). And now none of their successors have the political clout to cut those jobs back to pre-boom levels. That's just my sense and I don't have any statistics to back it up. But I hear something along these lines taking place in Maryland. Hawk