The Sacramento Bee has a headline that reads: “State auditor: California’s net worth at negative $127.2 billion“.
As troubling as that headline is, the most startling material is buried in the last paragraph of the article:
The list of long-term obligations did not include the much-disputed unfunded liabilities for state employees’ future pensions, nor the $60-plus billion in unfunded liabilities for retiree health care. The Governmental Accounting Standards Board and Moody’s, a major bond credit rating house, have been pushing states and localities to include unfunded retiree obligations in their balance sheets and were they to be added to California’s, it could push its negative net worth down by several hundred billion dollars.