Rainy Day Fund

Recently, the state of Oklahoma reported having only $2 left in the rainy day fund. Now, I don't know how much was in there a few years ago, but it was in the hundreds of millions. Also, for those of you who, like me, lived through the 80's, this recent economic downturn was a walk in the park compared to the one back then.

This makes me wonder how in the world our state could have spent several hundred million dollars more than was in our budget, while in the 80’s, we made it just fine without the rainy day fund.

Just today, I heard a statistic that I found interesting. In a similar vein, Greece, the average debt per citizen is $42,000. The average debt for a United State's citizens is $44,000. Now, I'm not talking about personal debt, I'm talking about government debt.