Credit Ratings of Each State

Gil sent me this:

It reminds of me of the AAA ratings that were on bundled mortgages even though when you looked inside at the individual mortgages there was a lot of junk. To me this is more evidence for why most spending (especially social programs like medicare, medicaid and social security) should be done at the state and not the federal level. States can't print money and hide bad debt as well as the federal government. If they make too many poor fiscal choices their citizens will just leave and the state will have to restructure through bankruptcy. At the federal level, inflation can just make our debts all "disappear" over time.