The fiscal catastrophe that dwarfs Greece

What happens when you share a currency with a political unit in a fiscal shambles?  No, I don't mean Greece:
So JPMorgan makes a $2 billion mistake -- less than 7 percent of their 2011 earnings -- with their own money, and senators are calling for hearings. The California's governor's office raised its 2012 budget deficit projections -- namely their overspending of public money -- almost 50 percent, from $9.2 billion to $16 billion, an error of almost eight percent of the state's total budget, in four months, yet those same members of Congress remain as silent as a Trappist monk.
H/t Maggie's Farm

5 comments:

  1. Investigate California? Ha! The made men/women of Organized Crime are not going after any of their own.

    In the matter of JP Morgan, the capofamiglia and their consigliere are having a little get together for public relations, nothing more...

    Leave the debt. Take the cannoli.

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  2. Anonymous5:41 PM

    OT but Italy just took a double hit - the earthquake damaged a number of factories, along with an enormous cheese repository. Think of it as a cheese bank, if you will, with 300,000 cheeses. It sounds funny, but that is over a million dollars US in exportable goods that may have been destroyed.

    The fatalities from the quake are only 6 thus far (1641 CDT on Sunday), thanks be to G-d.

    LittleRed1

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  3. Oh- not the cheese...

    I had the best breakfast I ever had in my life in the portico of a Parmigiano Reggiano cheesemaking facility. As students, we had a tour of the cheese making (early- as that's when the milk comes in from the farms), and the warehouse, and then we walked out to a couple of tables spread with samples of the 12 month and 24 month Parmigiano (so we could taste the difference), and local Prosecco to wash it down.

    I was down sick the last couple of days and hadn't even heard of the earthquake- I have to tell you, those cheese warehouses are quite large, and there's a lot of time invested in there- you can't just crank up production to make up for a shortage of 24 month cheese.

    By the way, the Parma ham houses are amazing also- though they didn't give us free samples.

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  4. Oh, and ON topic, California is hopeless, I think. When they can't even figure out accurately how bad it is- you know it's worse. We're just bracing for it to tip over, now.

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  5. Wow, that sounds like an amazingly good breakfast.

    I'm sorry to hear about the Italian tragedy. I meant to acknowledge your comment earlier, but dropped the ball on doing so.

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