California increased its income and sales taxes recently, in the midst of a recession. That measure was intended to be a temporary increase. Coupled with an increase in the yearly car registration fee, it appeared that plenty of funds would be raised by the new levies. Well, the summer showed that California hadn’t yet left budget crisis mode. As part of a deal to close a $26 billion budget deficit, California is resorting to a dirty trick- taking a no interest loan from its constituents.
Read the rest of this entry »Carnivals and Links, Week of October 28
On October - 28 - 2009
A collection of links and carnival hosts for the week.
Read the rest of this entry »The Real Estate Collapse Epicenter
On August - 19 - 2009
According to this post at Real Clear Markets, foreclosures in July in the United States are overwhelmingly concentrated in a few states. Yes; you know that the sunbelt states have been hit hard by the mortgage crisis, but the pain must be spread around nationwide, right? Well… maybe not as much as you think. California, Florida, Nevada, and Arizona make up a whopping 57% of the nation’s foreclosures.
Read the rest of this entry »Are California IOUs Constitutional?
On July - 3 - 2009
Yesterday, California started to issue IOUs (technically, registered warrants) to creditors since it is ensnared in a major budget impasse. California has taken this step before, most notably in 1992, but they also issued IOUs during the Great Depression.
Since the warrants are unavoidable at this point, I’ll shift my focus to another issue- constitutionality. Is what California is doing legal under the terms of our Constitution? And what is a ‘bill of credit’?
Read the rest of this entry »Interview With an Ex-Con
On June - 30 - 2009
Everyone’s got prison on their mind!
With Bernard Madoff in the news due to his 150 year sentence for running a massive ponzi scheme, the floodgates have been opened in terms of the number of prison related articles in the news. In this article I’ll share with you some of them I found most thought provoking, and maybe I’ll even throw in a few thoughts of mine. Today I offer you this offbeat post about prison.
Read the rest of this entry »Of Risk and Men
On June - 27 - 2009
Can states default on their debt? The state of California has been in the news recently because of a $24.3 billion gap in funding. Is it possible that we may soon hear of a state actually going ‘bankrupt’? What are the economic and political ramifications if California takes such a step?
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