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California and Cyprus

California and Cyprus

State auditor: California’s net worth at negative $127.2 billion (h/t @patrickmcgleason):

Were California’s state government a business, it would be a candidate for insolvency with a negative net worth of $127.2 billion, according to an annual financial report issued by State Auditor Elaine Howle and the Bureau of State Audits.The report, which covers the fiscal year ending June 30, 2012, says that the state’s negative status — all of its assets minus all of its liabilities — increased that year, largely because it spent more than it received in revenue….

The list of long-term obligations did not include the much-disputed unfunded liabilities for state employees’ future pensions, nor the $60-plus billion in unfunded liabilities for retiree health care. The Governmental Accounting Standards Board and Moody’s, a major bond credit rating house, have been pushing states and localities to include unfunded retiree obligations in their balance sheets and were they to be added to California’s, it could push its negative net worth down by several hundred billion dollars.

Bank of Cyprus Customers May Lose as Much as 60% on Deposits:

Cyprus may imposes losses of as much as 60 percent on Bank of Cyprus Plc accounts exceeding 100,000 euros ($128,000) as part of an aid deal to stop the country from going bankrupt.

Customers will have 37.5 percent of their deposits above this amount converted into shares with full voting rights and access to any future Bank of Cyprus dividend, the Nicosia-based central bank said in an e-mailed statement. A further 22.5 percent will be temporarily withheld to ensure the lender meets the terms of its recapitalization, as agreed under Cyprus’s loan agreement with international creditors, the central bank said.

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Speaking of California…

More than 30 massive earthquake safety bolts on San Francisco’s newly redesigned Bay Bridge fail
While the steel used on the deck sections of the bridge was imported from China, the faulty bolts were manufactured in the United States, Anziano said.

This is the same scenario which lead to BP’s rig failure in the Gulf. They used defective steel manufactured in China.

At a cost of $6.4 billion, the eastern span of the Bay Bridge is the largest public works project in California history.

Yeah! The residents of California are well served by their government.

” the state’s negative status — all of its assets minus all of its liabilities — increased that year, largely because it spent more than it received in revenue”

Seriously? Seriously?
I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.

As California goes, so will Rhode Island follow…

And the citizens of that state are oblivious to the danger that debt and deficit spending pose. Always I hear, this argument:

The National Debt isn’t a problem, Private debt is.

Well, since government pays PEOPLE, and those people then spend money in the private sector, and then requires taxes to pay those people, then it eventually becomes a problem, since the REVENUE IS GENERATED FROM PRIVATE MEANS! If it prints money, the government pays people with MADE UP MONOPOLY MONEY, then the value of existing dollars purchasing power goes DOWN.

I’m tired of fiscal insanity. And fiscal inanity,

The call will come, and when the government cannot pay the call, the crap will hit the fan overnight.

After America gets rid of the likes of Barack Obama, it will collectively tell CA to pay its own debts. Then, you’ll see CA in a miraculous recovery — much like NY after then-president Gerald Ford refused to bail that city out.

    SoCalPatriot in reply to TheFineReport.com. | April 2, 2013 at 9:54 am

    My most devout wish is that this would be true. Using the Saul Alinsky playbook, Obama The Dog Eater and the Dems spend 90% of their time campaigning and demonizing Conservatives and others who stand in their way of total control.
    All the LIV (low information voters) see is through the mainstream media, Tonight Show, David Letterman and the Daily Show, as propaganda arms of Himself. They have accepted high unemployment, choking regulation, hatred and intolerance of others and stifling taxes as the New Normal. In talking to people where I live, I realize that they have tuned out and are disconnected from their responsibility of what I learned in the Boy Scouts as “citizenship.” With multi million $$ going to stupid and bizarre people on “reality shows,” this is what passes for entertainment and is what now occupies these people.
    The waves of reform started in the 2010 mid term elections crashed against the slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and California, once a bastion of freedom and prosperity, stands as, what I fear, the standard for most of the rest of the country. We are swamped by people who, born in other countries, no longer assimilate into what we call the “American Culture.” They bring their 3rd world socialist tendencies with them and vote Stalinist turds into office, hiking fees and taxes, driving out private business and re making the economy (cap and trade for man made global warming, even though it has been shown to be a fraud).
    This is what California is now. That is why the Aerospace industry has all but fled the State, no real industry or business is coming here, water has been turned off to farmers to solve a phony crisis(an allegedly threatened delta smelt, a small fish) found by the eco-lunatics that determine policy here, and previously unacceptable level of unemployment.
    California is finished as a human-friendly state. But beware. The model is coming soon to a state near you.

Odd, isn’t it? California, as a State in our Union, has more effective sovereignty than the putatively “independent” nations with membership in the EU.

No one can tell California they have to pay their debts. Even though the deficits are a clear violation of the state constitution, there is no provision in the US Constitution that would allow the federal government to force California to obey its own laws.

Only the people who buy their bonds can stop their insanity. When bond funds and pension funds start divesting themselves of California paper, combined with the exodus of businesses, higher-income individuals, and private equity, then perhaps the state will face reality.

But as federal taxpayers we must also draw a line in the sand: not one penny of federal aid to save any state from the consequences of their own mismanagement.

To California, we say: hey, you must have had a plan when you spent all the money you didn’t have. Hope it works out for you.

Henry Hawkins | April 1, 2013 at 11:36 am

I will absolutely laugh my ass off if California decides to pull a ‘cypriotomy’ on their wealthiest citizens, especially taking 60% of the bank accounts of all those Hollywood libiots.

    Subotai Bahadur in reply to Henry Hawkins. | April 1, 2013 at 12:44 pm

    As would I. However, we both know that any such Cypri-fornian legislation, Executive Order, or ukase would have an exemption for the entertainment industry and Leftist NGO’s. It is the California way.

    Subotai Bahadur

You California muppets can’t handle the truth! Bitchez,we live a world that has printing presses,and those printers have to be guarded by men with guns,who’s gonna do it? You? You Jerry Brown? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for the citizens of California,and you curse the Federal Reserve. You have that luxury,you have that luxury of not knowing what I know. That the dollar’s slow death made a few old white men wealthy,and it’s unbacked existence and imaginary value,grotesque and incomprehensible to you,enables bankers to live large while providing nothing of value to our society. You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties,you want me on that printer,you need me on that printer. We use words like greed, power,ego-stroking domination. We use these words as a backbone of a life spent defending something,you use them as a punch line. I have neither the time,nor the inclination to explain myself to a man that rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very fiat dollars that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide them. I’d rather you just said thank you,and went on your way. Otherwise I suggest you pick up an ink cartridge and man a press,either way,I don’t give a damn what you think you are entitled to.