That's not true at all. Most of the south-east Pennsylvanian school districts in Chester and Delaware Co. have pay scales that top out in the mid 80's to low 90's. In Delaware and Maryland, most teachers will be lucky to retire with a salary in the low 60's. Want to guess which area has better schools?

Define work...

Then again, maybe that's why I can't find a job.

It's as if a thousand bureaucrats cried out "Houston, we have a problem" in terror, and were suddenly silenced.

Because bankruptcy depends on cash flow - if you find yourself needing to raise a lot of money in a very, very short time due to a once in a century event, you can go broke overnight.

Credit ratings essentially depend on cash flow estimates. Unless someone at S&P or Moody's anticipated and understood everything that occurred over the past month, there was no reason, according to the models that they used, not to give profitable financial institutions semi-quality ratings.