How far in the red can you take your treasury?

Your morale essentially goes down the tubes if you go into the red. If you take your balance too far down, sooner or later you're going to have everyone of your planets rebelling against you. That is unless you don't get owned by the AI first.

Not only can't you buy anything once you hit 0, but once you hit -501 you can't spend anything on production or research -- it all goes into maintenance, paying off leases and tributes, and bringing your treasury back up.

#1 - ya sure? I know someone has said there is a negaitve morale impact of being in the red, but I haven't heard before that it gets worse the further down the hole you get. Must admit, I think it must be subtle, since I really haven't noticed it. (Of course, I spend most of the game slightly in the red, so perhaps I am handicapping myself)...

Anyone?

If you have more maintainence costs than income, your treasury can go as low as -2.1G bc, if you can keep planets form rebelling and AI from invading long enough to get there.

And the morale impact does increase as your treasury decreases, but it's not much of a change until you get below -500bc.

~SDC~

I had one end game where my treasury was permanently negative.

I lost all trade routes going to the final war, already had plenty of ships and tech...

I used the most expensive invasion options every time...

Taxes just went to maintenance.

Bottom line, no real downside to going deep deep deeper in debt under that circumstance

Lowest I've ever been in debt is 2100 Bc's.
Most of my planets were unhappy, cept for the best 25+PQ one's.
I didn't lose a single one to rebellion though, and I was still flipping other planets to join me.
I managed to restructure my economy to reel in profits.
Point is, debt is always such a bad thing, but you gotta try and turn it around as soon as you can.

*evil chuckle* I once sent an AI down well past -50,000 BC. I'd beaten it badly in war, but they were curiously rich (~7000 BC on hand, unusual for a normal-level major that's getting hammered, I'd think), so I managed to demand something like 7000 BC x 100 turns or so. Ouch.