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:

bthun said...

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.

Anonymous said...

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

douglas said...

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.

douglas said...

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.

Grim said...

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.