Mother of pearl! First, California was $15 billion in the hole. Then it was $28 billion. Now it's $41 billion and counting. Sure, some of this is mere hype which Governor Arnold is using to prod the legislature into action. But most of this latter number must be true; and the more Governor Arnold talks about it, the more the fact that California is dead broke embeds itself in the minds of citizens of the state and, more importantly, in the minds of the financiers from whom the state wants to borrow billions. The governor may want to tone down the hype before he scares away any potential buyer of California's bonds. In any case, California is a mess, maybe an incorrigible mess, and we're only in the first act of the melodrama called "The Great Depression of the 21st Century" with many acts yet to follow. Remember when Okies fled 1930s dust bowl Oklahoma and went to California (immortalized by the Joad family in "The Grapes of Wrath")? Well, perhaps their descendants currently living there should consider fleeing back to Oklahoma while they still have the chance.
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