This has grave implications for the future of green power, energy and environmental prosperity...This matters, too. Much has been made globally of the problems of Ireland and Iceland. Yet California dwarfs both. It is the eighth largest economy in the world, with a population of 37 million. If it was an independent country it would be in the G8. And if it were a company, it would likely be declared bankrupt.Guardian - Will California become America's first failed state? ....the state that was once held up as the epitome of the boundless opportunities of America has collapsed. - So what has gone so catastrophically wrong?
- State staff are being paid in IOUs,
- Unemployment is at its highest in 70 years
- Teachers are on hunger strike.
- Patients without medical insurance wait for treatment
- Crowds of impoverished stand or lie aimlessly on the hot tarmac of the centre's car park.
- Los Angeles now has a poverty rate of 20%
- California's government has had to agree to a deal that cuts billions of dollars from education and sacks 60,000 state employees.
- California's schools are ranked 47th out of 50 in the nation.
- Its government-issued bonds have been ranked just above "junk".
From its politics to its economy to its environment and way of life, California is like a patient on life support. At the start of summer the state government was so deeply in debt that it began to issue IOUs instead of wages. Its unemployment rate has soared to more than 12%, the highest figure in 70 years. Desperate to pay off a crippling budget deficit, California is slashing spending in education and healthcare, laying off vast numbers of workers and forcing others to take unpaid leave. In a state made up of sprawling suburbs the collapse of the housing bubble has impoverished millions and kicked tens of thousands of families out of their homes. Its political system is locked in paralysis and the two-term rule of former movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger is seen as a disaster – his approval ratings having sunk to levels that would make George W Bush blush. The crisis is so deep that Professor Kevin Starr, who has written an acclaimed history of the state, recently declared: "California is on the verge of becoming the first failed state in America." Read full at Guardian
