Texas vs. California Update for April 16, 2013

Time for another Texas vs. California update:

  • The Stockton Bankruptcy:

    Alarm bells have been ringing loudly in the heads of municipal bond investors…If you’re the chief of municipal bond investing for a big bank, whether on Wall Street or in San Francisco, Los Angeles or Chicago, this gets your attention. You might hesitate to lend hundreds of millions of dollars to other cities and counties if you fear they might go the Stockton route. Even if you proceed, you might insist on higher interest rates to compensate for what now appears to be added risk. That can translate to higher local taxes.

  • Can judges hire lawyers to lobby against budget cuts for courts? In what universe could the answer to that be anything but “No”?
  • California high speed rail to nowhere would lose hundred of millions of dollars a year.
  • Union response to the high speed rail boondoggle? Screw you. We’ve got ours, jack.
  • Seven years, seven billion more in unfunded liabilities for Los Angeles’ two largest pension plans.
  • Current California pension reform proposals are only a start.
  • Sacramento proposes to spend $447 million on an arena for a losing, mismanaged basketball team. “It’s 60 to 75 percent public subsidies.”
  • Problem: California’s politicians spend money like drunken sailors with a stolen credit card. Solution: Eliminate Proposition 13 so they can spend even more.
  • Indeed, that was just one of the many pro-economic suicide measures passed at the California Democratic convention.
  • Meanwhile, Rick Perry is pushing a business tax cut.
  • Austin, Houston and San Antonio among top 5 cities for small business.
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