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In a small public-TV studio before an invitation-only audience of 30 people, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder made his case Friday for taking control of Detroit's finances away from the city's elected officials.

The state's signature city is grappling with a declining population, a dwindling tax base and decades of mismanagement — including corruption so pervasive at times that former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is currently on trial for federal racketeering charges.

That's left Detroit with a budget deficit of more than $300 million, and the city is unable to stem the flow of red ink.

“ I think that things will definitely get worse before they get any better. There's so much debt. I think that an emergency manager really wouldn't do much right now."

Friday's deadline for President Obama to issue a sequestration order is neither the beginning nor the end of this year's budget battles in Washington. Here are five key moments to watch over the next seven months, and what's at stake in each:

March 1
Sequestration of $85 billion from projected spending for the current fiscal year (which expires Sept. 30) begins no later than 11:59 p.m. It will cut 13 percent of defense spending — uniformed personnel costs are exempted — and 9 percent of domestic discretionary spending, including 2 percent of Medicare spending (which would come out of payments to providers, not reductions in coverage). Medicaid and Social Security are not subject to sequestration, nor are food stamps.

March 27
The continuing resolution (CR) by which the federal government is being funded expires March 27. If a new CR is not approved by Congress before then, there could be a government shutdown at that point. House Republicans are expected next week to propose a CR that would cover the remainder of the fiscal year (through Sept. 30) that would reflect the spending reductions forced by sequestration. Senate Democrats prefer not to bake the sequestration into a funding resolution in order to leave some flexibility to change or rescind the forced cuts. The prevailing sentiment in both parties is that it's in nobody's interest to have a government shutdown. Congress is scheduled to begin a two-week spring recess March 22, so lawmakers have exactly three weeks to agree on a new CR, or face losing some of their break trying to eke out a deal averting a shutdown.

April 1
Federal employees can only be furloughed with 30 days' notice, and notices cannot be sent until sequestration is in effect, so there can be no employee furloughs before April 1. Agencies are expected to wait until Monday, March 4, to send out notices.

Mid-Summer
The statutory debt ceiling has been suspended by Congress through mid-May, meaning the Treasury Department can accrue additional debt until then without violating any legal limit. So all the stopgap measures Treasury has at its disposal to stave off default once the debt limit has been reached are still available, and thus will likely make it unnecessary to raise the debt limit until mid-summer. That's when we could see another showdown.

October 1
The beginning of fiscal year 2014 could prove another crisis point. There's little agreement about how sequestration should be dealt with in next year's budget, so passing appropriations bills may prove difficult. By law — the August 2011 Budget Control Act — sequestration is to continue every year for the next eight years, paring around $85 billion each year off projected spending levels.

Detroit is broke. On Friday, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder announced the state will take over the city's finances.

"It is time to say, we need to start moving upward with the city of Detroit," he said.

But the question on many people's minds is whether state intervention will be enough — and whether the more ominous and painful scenario of municipal bankruptcy can be avoided.

Adding Up The Debt

Just how far gone is Detroit? Eric Lupher, director of local affairs for the Citizens Research Council of Michigan, sums it up like this:

U.S.

Michigan Officials Take Control Of Detroit's Empty Wallet

There are few things in life more joyful than discovering a giant oil or natural gas field in Texas. You're suddenly rich beyond your wildest dreams. When the scope and size of the natural gas reservoir in the Barnett Shale in North Texas first became apparent, there were predictions that the find would last 100 years.

Well, that was over the top. But University of Texas geology professor Scott Tinker, who designed and authored a new study of the Barnett Shale, says there's still a lot of gas down there, even after a decade of drilling.

"Turns out, what we learned is that there's a lot of good rock left to drill," Tinker says. "And there's quite a bit of natural gas to be produced in the better areas of the reservoir."

Tinker and his team, who examined more than 15,000 gas wells drilled over the past 10 years, found the Barnett Shale is currently producing an astonishing 2 trillion cubic feet of natural gas every year. Tinker doesn't believe this rate will increase, but he believes the reservoir will last another 25 years.

"It probably is reaching its plateau of production, which is about 10 percent of U.S. demand," Tinker says. "So in that total production, where you've produced around 13 trillion cubic feet so far ... we still see another 25 or 30 more trillion cubic feet of gas throughout the life of that field."

Some Wells Still Coming Up Dry

With the amazing leaps in imaging technology these days, you wouldn't think thousands of wells drilled in the Barnett come up dry — like the oil wildcatters in the 1930s, '40s and '50s in East and West Texas.

But Tinker says you would be wrong.

Business

U.S. Has A Natural Gas Problem: Too Much Of It