The finance ministry, beset by mounting internal and external debt, has gone to Professor Madhu Dandavate, a sober and respected academic and parliamentarian.

Instead, the two houses are busy invoking sham versions that make a show of mandating cuts in selective programs, while once again ignoring lost revenues and mounting debt on the other side of the ledger.

Mr. Fastow calmly outlined the role of the banks in helping Enron meet its earnings targets while hiding its poor cash flow and mounting debt.

ALBANY'S extraordinarily poor performance has many dimensions, but none is more important than its fiscal mess: 20 years of late budgets, paralysis in response to a court order to fix school financing formulas, soaring Medicaid costs nearly bankrupting counties and mounting debt that will haunt future generations.

Relationships between working spouses, already strained by child care, care of the elderly and other demands on time and money, are now being tested by layoffs, vanishing savings, mounting debt and pessimism about the future.

In 1998, citing concerns about the MTA's mounting internal problems, growing debt and myriad subway construction mishaps and cost overruns, Yaroslavsky sponsored a controversial ballot initiative, Proposition A, to prevent transit sales tax monies from being used to build underground rail lines.

Sacred Heart High School remained open until 1971 when mounting debt, and the passing of the pastor, Rev. Raymond Clancy, forced the parish to close the school at the end of the 1970-71 school year.