California

For entities not awarded illusory funding by the ECB, U.S. Treasury Department, or the State of California, reality pounces like a thief in the night, sometimes literally.

Evangelos Venizelos is dispatched to consider how to prevent the government from sacking tens of thousands of workers in order to prevent the Greek from defaulting on its debt. He suggests that California’s previous IOU issuance is a model…

I was on Headline, BNN’s midday show on financial news, talking to presenter Paul Waldie and fellow guest Jacquie McNish this past Wednesday. The big news then was LinkedIn (LNKD). The first guest, Bill Buhr of Morningstar, spoke to the…

I heard this about Bell, California on the car radio this morning. The sums involved are absolutely astronomical for a town of 37,000.  This may be an extreme case but it far from isolated. Hundreds of residents of one of the…

Frederick Sheehan is the author of Panderer to Power: The Untold Story of How Alan Greenspan Enriched Wall Street and Left a Legacy of Recession  (McGraw-Hill, 2009). Discussions about municipal finance generally assume three…

Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance Monthly Survey of Real Estate Market Conditions reports that homebuyer declined in May, as would be expected with the end of the latest federal home purchase tax credit.  The most dramatic drop was with…

While California has been the poster boy for state budgetary woes, Illinois has moved into the top spot as the US state most likely to default on its debt. To avoid default more cuts are going to be necessary. See recent posts by me and…

You saw my Stat of the Day: California now in top ten for highest government default probabilities in the world. Here's a look at those CDS spreads for California over time - Michigan and Illinois are in the mix here too.

With the liquidity crisis surrounding the rollover of Greek debt subsiding, the probability of default for that country has plummeted from nearly even odds to just over one in three. Last Week's Numbers: 06 May 2010 Meanwhile, other…

Tax revenue at state and local governments has plummeted. With house prices in California down substantially, it is even more dire for municipalities there. The result will be widespread budget cuts and, where possible, income tax hikes.…