The Bills are in the Billions

Hawaii.StateBudgetWatch.org has issued a report on the financial state of the state which may be summarized as follows.

+$19,555,468,000 Assets
-$13,244,809,000 Capital Assets (we can't sell roads and bridges to pay bills)
- $2,381,139,000 Restricted Assets (law does not allow the sale of these assets)
+$3,929,520,000 Available Assets to Pay Bills

-$10,218,595,000 Reported Liabilities (these appear in the biennial budgets)
-$11,903,857,000 Unreported Retirement Liabilities (these are hidden in the biennial budgets but very much real liabilities: pension funds and coverages for state employees)**

+$18,192,932,000 Money Needed to Pay Liabilities

$39,600 Each Taxpayer’s Financial Burden

The report does not include city's projected liabilities which easily top
+$11,000,000,000 for Rail and Sewers alone

Each Oahu taxpayer's liability today is well over $60,000.

Here is a comparison of how bad this is: Greece is near bankruptcy. Greece's debt is about $440 Billion (over 300 Billion euro) and there are about 11 million Greeks. So the current liability for each Greek is about $40,000.

To cope with the repayment of the debt, sales taxes in Greece exploded to 23% and added gasoline tax increased price from $5 per gallon in early 2010 to $8 per gallon in mid-2010.

Meanwhile in Hawaii a thoroughly rotted political structure supported by myopic large businesses and entertainment-focused media is piling on bad projects, bad laws, bad decisions and colossal debt.

** Update (1/28/11): Hawaii makes national news by having the highest debt. "Hawaii's debt, for instance, is $5.2 billion. But so is its pension obligation. Combined, the dual obligations make up 16.2% of the state's economy, according to a report released Thursday by Moody's Investors Service. That's the nation's highest total liability as a share of the state's gross domestic product." This seriously jeopardizes Hawaii's to issue bonds at favorable rates.