It gets tiresome reading day after day on the ever deeper hole states, cities and other municipalities are digging themselves into. Tiresome, until Michael Lewis writes about it. In this case he covers California and a couple of cities that are already beginning to collapse.

The problem was going to grow worse until, as he put it, “you get to one.” A single employee to service the entire city, presumably with a focus on paying pensions. “I don’t know how far out you have to go until you get to one,” said Reed, “but it isn’t all that far.” At that point, if not before, the city would be nothing more than a vehicle to pay the retirement costs of its former workers.

Read the whole thing here: California and Bust