There was a huge riot at the California Institution for Men in Chino, CA, about 40 miles east of LA, over the weekend (“Hundreds Hurt In California Prison Riot”, The New York Times, August 10). UPDATE (Mon 8/10, 12:30pm PST):…
California, it’s been observed, is a canary in the socioeconomic mine, telling the rest of the nation what to expect in the future, for better or worse. If so, then the rest of the nation had best be prepared for fragmentation,…
Source: “Sacramento’s wave of lost jobs hits some harder than others”, The Sacramento Bee, July 14, A1
California’s fiscal mess has begun to rattle municipal bond investors. Market yields on the state’s outstanding general obligation bonds have jumped in the last week, reflecting falling prices for the securities as buyers have backed away. Traders were quoting annualized tax-free…
Is this what a bottom looks like? This city was among the first in the nation to fall victim to the real estate collapse. Now it seems to be in the earliest stages of a recovery, a hopeful sign for…
If the ballot measures fail and the recession does continue unabated into 2010, the budget gap could widen again into the $20 billion range. But the governor and legislative leaders may have fired all their political bullets in February, leaving them…
One of the interesting features of the real estate boom was the way that outlying areas from major metros took off. As real estate got more and more expensive in the big metros (Bay Area, LA, etc…), a lot of…
Two weeks ago, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said that in January he would declare a “fiscal emergency” in the face of an anticipated $14 billion budget defecit for the 2008-09 fiscal year (July 1, 2008-June 30, 2009)(“Budget Crisis Decree Coming”,…
Last November, the voters of CA approved more than $37 billion in bond issuance to improve the state’s infrastructure. Next Monday and Tuesday retail investors will be able to place orders for $2.5 billion in bonds that go on sale…