Is this business (stated all over the media, not just slate) about how the federal government “can step in and put the state into receivership” somewhere in the Constitution?

In any event, the moment the CA bond holders have any real sense of imminent default by California that will not be bailed out by the feds, the interest rates on CA bonds will skyrocket, and CA is done.

We can each speculate if/when this happens and whether the fed will bail out the states (more accurately: whether the fed will bail out the bond holders and government employee pensions).