This time the governor objected. “But we’ve run balanced budgets for generations. We have no debt. Until recently, it was illegal!”
Keenan chuckled. “I didn’t say you had debt, I said you had obligations. Take the state employees’ pension fund, for example. You’re looking at several hundred billion in obligations, against which your annual budget currently applies less than two billion. For an investor looking for a reliable income stream, these obligations represent extreme risk. What are the chances that the courts will find the guarantees made to the lenders higher priority than the demands of the retired union employees?”
Keenan popped numbers and figures on the screen until his guests’ eyes glazed, as he had intended. The goal in this part of the discussion was to make the client ac
