Finance | California Policy Center

Oregon Governor Demands Taxes and Emergency Powers to Pay Unionized Public Workforce

Looking for amazing arrogance coupled with economic stupidity at the state government level? You can find it in Oregon where Governor Kitzhaber Demands Tax Hikes and Emergency Powers and Warns he Might Turn to National Guard, if the legislature does not see things his way. Gov. John Kitzhaber warned Monday that he could be forced to...

By Mike Shedlock

Los Angeles Police Union Attacks CPPC Study

On May 17th the Los Angeles Police Protective Leagues “Board of Directors” authored a post on their LAPPL blog entitled “Inventing the headline number,” attacking the research and the motives of California Public Policy Center. Here’s how the post began: “The playbook is familiar now—gin up a study on public pensions and government debt to be...

By Edward Ring

California’s State/Local Governments Confront $1.0 Trillion in Debt

A study released earlier today by the California Public Policy Center entitled “Calculating California’s Total State and Local Government Debt” has estimated that state and local government debt is somewhere between $848 billion and $1.12 trillion. This is the first attempt we’ve ever seen by anyone to provide an estimate. Small wonder. If Californians understood...

By Edward Ring

What If Every Worker Made What City of Irvine Workers Make?

“Jennifer Muir, a spokeswoman for the Orange County Employees’ Association, which represents more than 18,000 public employees in Orange County, said the California Public Policy Center’s study was a politically motivated attack on public employees and unions. Aside from promoting the center’s anti-public employee union agenda, Muir said, the reports are misleading and shift focus away...

By Edward Ring

Philadelphia Selling Assets to Delay Financial Meltdown

A recent report entitled Philadelphia, 5th Largest City in US is Effectively Bankrupt; Mayor Holds Closed Meeting With Wall Street to Discuss Asset Sales generated several emails from disgruntled people hoping to leave the area for the usual complaints: unions, schools, crime. One reader sent a link to a Philly.Com article by Joseph N. DiStefano titled Philly effort to keep well-known...

By Mike Shedlock

CalPERS Pension System in the Crosshairs of Stockton Bankruptcy Dispute

A few days ago a federal judge sided with the city of Stockton, validating its bankruptcy. See Judge Rules Stockton CA Bankruptcy is Valid, City Acted in Good Faith. Bondholders screamed, but the ruling made sense. What did not make sense (except from the point of view of politicians protecting their own undeserved pensions), was...

By Mike Shedlock

To the Public Sector Unions, California is now the model for America

Ever since California’s voters approved the Prop. 30 sales-and income-tax increase on the November ballot, liberal commentators have been gloating about the resurgence of the Golden State after many years of predicted doom and gloom. Their evidence: Higher taxes seem to have cleared up the state’s budget deficits. As New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote recently,...

By Steven Greenhut

Judge Rules Stockton CA Bankruptcy is Valid, City Acted in Good Faith

Today a judge ruled that the city of Stockton California is indeed bankrupt and that the city acted in good faith. Creditors asked the judge to void the bankruptcy, saying the city could raise taxes instead. I have been watching this story for a while. Here is some background on the Stockton bankruptcy as reported by Arizona Central....

By Mike Shedlock

Union Greed Drives California to Bankruptcy

Few non-local people pay much attention to the goings-on in Stockton, a hard-pressed Gold-Rush-era industrial city of 300,000 that sits in the agriculturally rich San Joaquin Valley at the eastern edge of the California Delta. But bondholders, taxpayers and government officials throughout the country will be listening to U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Klein’s expected ruling...

By Steven Greenhut

Politicians Prefer Scare Tactics to Genuine Reform

Not many of my friends or neighbors are sitting on pins and needles, worrying that the world as we know it will end as the federal government “slashes” spending as part of the automatic sequester cuts mandated by a previous budget bill. And not many people have been thinking, “Geesh, there’s nothing we need more...

By Steven Greenhut

GASB Loopholes Created Illusions of Solvency

What if most of the public employee compensation enhancements of the past decade or more in California were based on inaccurately optimistic government financial statements? Or to be blunt, what if government decision makers thought they could afford these compensation enhancements, because the information they relied on used accounting gimmicks that would land a person...

By Edward Ring

Hard To Keep Up With Economically Illiterate Proposals

Editor’s Note: In a provocative recent book “The Great Rebalancing,” economist Michael Pettis writes “thanks to the internet, much of the best writing and debate has taken place in the modern equivalent of the nineteenth century’s pamphlets, broadsheets, and coffeehouse discussions – economic blogs. For many years the development and understanding of economic theory was...

By Mike Shedlock

Higher Taxes and More Government Borrowing Will Not Grow the Economy

As if taking a cue from California’s Governor Brown, President Obama has presented a 2013 budget to Congress that spends, taxes and borrows. It includes $1.9 trillion in new taxes and adds trillions more to our nation’s debt. Budgets which have as their foundation more government spending regardless of economic conditions, debt load or taxpayers’...

By Jon Coupal

Update on Detroit’s Looming Bankruptcy

The hollowing out of Detroit is nearly complete. All that’s left is a bankrupt shell of a city with no services and scattered citizens that do not pay taxes. The Detroit News reports Half of Detroit Property Owners Don’t Pay Taxes Nearly half of the owners of Detroit’s 305,000 properties failed to pay their tax...

By Mike Shedlock