Check out this gem from The Wall Street Journal

<span style="font-size: larger;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">CA is in one heck of a mess for sure, but what's really on display here is the unwillingness for <b>all</b> parties to shoulder some of the burden to get the state out of the mess that it took them a long time to get into in the first place.&nbsp; Dems have fought to minimize cuts to programs, while the GOP</span></span><span style="font-size: larger;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> refuses to accept <b>any</b> tax increases.&nbsp; CA state employees have had to endure unpaid furloughs, the elimination of state holidays, and layoffs so far.&nbsp; The CA voters (due to CA's stupid statewide binding referendum law) have so far refused to accept tax extensions &amp; money redirection into the CA general fund.&nbsp; The CA state sales &amp; use tax was only temporarily increased by 1% recently.&nbsp; CA services (including education) have been cut by many billions of dollars recently.&nbsp; <br />
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What's really needed is for all sides to come together to take the remaining necessary steps, which likely include tax increases to raise more revenue &amp; more cuts in state employments costs to lower state costs, in order to save CA.&nbsp; The USA can't afford having CA go under, period.</span></span><br />
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&nbsp;Dear Fellow Americans,
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<div>America has engaged in some finger wagging lately because California doesn't have enough money to meet its needs. The rest of the country (including President Obama) seems to be just fine with letting Californians dangle in the breeze without enough money to meet their needs.</div>
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<div>This is how it really is:</div>
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<div>California ranks 48th in the nation in power consumed per person. As of 2007, the gross state product (GSP) is about $1.812 trillion, the largest in the United States. California is responsible for 13 percent of the United States gross domestic product (GDP). As of 2006, California's GDP is larger than all but eight countries in the world (all but eleven countries by Purchasing Power Parity).</div>
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<div>California grows more than half the nation's fruit, nuts, and vegetables. We're keeping them. We need something to eat when the money is gone. We grow 99 percent or more of the nation's almonds, artichokes, dates, figs, kiwi, olives, persimmons, pistachios, prunes, raisins, and walnuts. Hope you won't miss them.</div>
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<div>California is the nation's number-one dairy state. We're keeping our dairy products. Got milk?</div>
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<div>We Californians are gonna keep all our high-tech software in-state. Silicon Valley is ours, after all. Without enough money, which you're apparently keeping for yourselves, we just plain don't have enough software to spare. Can you say &quot;typewriter&quot;?</div>
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<div>We're keeping all our airplanes. California builds a good percentage of the commercial airliners available to fly you people to where you want to go. When yours wear out, you'd better hope Boeing's Washington plant can keep you supplied. And while we're at it, we're keeping all our high-tech aerospace stuff, too. Oh, yeah, and if you want to make a long-distance call, remember where the satellite components and tracking systems come from. Maybe you could get back in the habit of writing letters.</div>
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<div>Want to see a blockbuster movie this weekend? Come to California. We make them here. The labs, printing facilities, editing facilities, and sound facilities are all here.</div>
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<div>Want some nice domestic wine? We produce over 17 million gallons per year. We'll need all of it to drown our sorrows when we think about the fact that no matter how many California products we export to make the rest of America's lives better, America can't see its way clear to help us out with a little money. &nbsp;You can no longer have any of our wine.</div>
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<div>You all complain that we don't budget well enough. Well, you don't grow enough food, write enough software, make enough movies, build enough airplanes and defense systems, or make enough wine.</div>
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<div>Love,</div>
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<div>The Californians&nbsp;</div>

Mr. G., I think they're holding out for just as much federal aid as they can get.&nbsp;&nbsp; At every step of the process.&nbsp;&nbsp; Time will tell what ultimately happens (whether the dollar gets hit substantially (even more than it already has)) because of so much deficit spending and government bailouts, etc.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Sam, a lot of Hollywood production has moved to Vancouver and Toronto, to benefit from the 20% cost discount on the currency exchange.&nbsp;&nbsp; Plus, they didn't seem to interefere very much with the affordability mortgage products which ballooned real estate.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I wonder what the story on that is?&nbsp;&nbsp;

&nbsp;CT, that is true, I also heard of India and bollywood is improving.

<span style="font-size: larger;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Hey, I think I clearly stated that the USA can't afford for CA to go under, but it's not like they are self-sufficient at all.&nbsp; I dunno who's going to buy all those fruit, nuts, vegetables, milk, movies, hi-tech software, airplanes, movies, and wine inside CA if the state really does go under.&nbsp;&nbsp; <img src="/editor/images/smiley/msn/devil_smile.gif" alt="" /><br />
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I also don't think that there's necessarily a precedent for &quot;federal aid&quot; to completely balance a state's internal budget, but I'd be open to seeing some data on that.&nbsp; <br />
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As for the U.S. Dollar, I would argue that failed &quot;trickle-down&quot; economic policies &amp; a lack of true regulation on financial institutions (all part of a horrible monetary policy of the past) has killed the Dollar.&nbsp; It's going to take a <i>long while</i> to fix that mess as well.<br />
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Mr. G.:&nbsp;&nbsp; I heard or read someplace that a chunk of the federal stimulus package has been used to prop up states.&nbsp;&nbsp; I don't recall where it was I saw it, and I don't really have the time to find it now.&nbsp;&nbsp; My apologies.&nbsp;&nbsp; If I see something in the future, I will post the link.<br />
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True regulation on financial institutions is certainly one way to look at it.&nbsp;&nbsp; But, whatever happened to self-regulation?!?&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; When Lehman went down there was great concern whether they would crash credit default swaps others were a party to, and thereby collapse the entire financial system.&nbsp;&nbsp; Luckily the Taxpayer was found to make good on AIG's cesspool of crap (it's been widely concluded the government injection of funds into AIG was really a backdoor bailout of Goldman Sachs and other firms.)&nbsp;&nbsp; But&nbsp;the key is, didn't the guys working in these financial meth labs consider&nbsp;what they were doing when&nbsp;they were&nbsp;doing it?&nbsp;&nbsp; Or the oversight within&nbsp;their own firms consider what the risk was???&nbsp;&nbsp; Those are the key questions which really need to be answered.&nbsp;&nbsp; If there ever was&nbsp;self-regulation, then why&nbsp;would there ever be a need for governmental regulation?&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;

<span style="font-size: larger;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Well, for sure <i>some</i> of the stimulus money has been used by a few states to stave off a few budget cuts, but that's a far cry from basically giving a state the equivalent of somewhere in the range of half the funding that they need to keep their state afloat.</span></span><br />
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&quot;True regulation on financial institutions is certainly one way to look at it.&nbsp;&nbsp; But, whatever happened to self-regulation?!?&quot;<br />
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<span style="font-size: larger;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Well, I would submit that's what was tried by the Bush Regime &amp; Alan Greenspan, and it didn't work...by Greenspan's own admission:<br />
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http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business… />
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&quot;Luckily the Taxpayer was found to make good on AIG's cesspool of crap (it's been widely concluded the government injection of funds into AIG was really a backdoor bailout of Goldman Sachs and other firms.)&quot;<br />
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<span style="font-size: larger;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">I agree that some of the main beneficiaries of the AIG takeover were not AIG themselves, but I also don't think that it was in the best interest of the USA to let one of the largest insurance companies in the world go under.&nbsp; They shouldn't have been allowed to get that big in the first place IMHO.</span></span><br />
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&quot;But&nbsp;the key is, didn't the guys working in these financial meth labs consider&nbsp;what they were doing when&nbsp;they were&nbsp;doing it?&quot;<br />
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<span style="font-size: larger;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">No, it was all about making short-term money, which they did...for a while.</span></span>&nbsp;&nbsp; <img src="/editor/images/smiley/msn/omg_smile.gif" alt="" /><br />
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&quot;If there ever was&nbsp;self-regulation, then why&nbsp;would there ever be a need for governmental regulation?&quot;<br />
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<span style="font-size: larger;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">That's the point I think, there was<i> never</i> any real &quot;self-regulation&quot; to begin with.</span></span><br />
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