Will ballooning state budgets be the next systemic financial crisis?

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In recent history, the United States has survived at least three major financial debacles: the Savings & Loan crisis around 1990, the bursting of Internet bubble around 2000, the collapse of the real estate bubble that began in 2007. What’s next? When I was writing “Boomergeddon” earlier this year, I expected the next traumatic financial event to be the default by the United States and other sovereign nations on their debt. But I didn’t see the U.S. hitting the skids until the mid-2020s.

Meredith Whitney, the superstar financial analyst who first warned how the real estate crash would create a disaster for U.S. banks, now warns of a looming sovereign debt crisis — but the sovereigns she refers to are not Greece, Ireland or Portugal. They are California, New Jersey, Illinois and Ohio.

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