Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Managing money the California way
I think that most governments do most of the stupid things that California has done, except on a smaller scale.
If we don't soon purge the political class, we're going to be in serious trouble for generations to come...
If we don't soon purge the political class, we're going to be in serious trouble for generations to come...
This is from Dan Walters in the Sacramento Bee:
"What, one might ask, is the appropriate metaphor for California's convoluted budgetary situation?
Would be it be Enron, which cooked its books to fool investors and lenders? Perhaps a Third World country whose rulers run up a mountain of debt while squandering revenues? Or both?
Whatever it may be, years of irresponsibility by politicians and voters alike have left California with ongoing spending obligations that are nearly 50 percent higher than its ongoing revenues – roughly $110 billion a year in the former and $75 billion in the latter – and debts that would be daunting even were the economy to improve dramatically.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislators have narrowed the structural budget gap in the short run with temporary taxes, temporary spending cuts, up-front and backdoor loans, projected asset sales, bookkeeping tricks and raids on local governments, but will probably see major deficits appear again soon."
