NY budget hell

"…New York finds itself in a particularly perilous spot because of its increasingly heavy reliance on the financial sector as its tax base. This summer, Gov. Paterson offered a stark example of the challenges: The top 16 banks paid $173 million of state taxes in June 2007, but that number fell to just $5 million this past June. And the financial sector generates one in five state tax dollars today, up from just 3% of state tax revenue in 1980."