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Stock market - upcoming crash

Stating the Obvious: Why the Stock Market Should Crash
(November 16, 2009)

The trillions squandered on "stabilization" is not leading to "recovery" of the real economy; it is only life support keeping a sick economy from imploding. The stock market rally rests on rapidly crumbling sand.

I'm not saying the stock market will crash, only that if it had any relation to the real U.S. economy that it should crash, and soon.

The current politics of experience (a key concept in Survival+) is so warped by misleading statistics and orchestrated propaganda that it feels strange to state the obvious and find it is "that which cannot be spoken": the credit-dependent, consumer-dependent U.S. economy is going down, and going down hard, and the trillions of dollars borrowed and spent by the U.S. government and Federal Reserve to crank up a recovery have failed completely, utterly and totally.

The basic idea of Keynesian policy is simple: when the wheels fall off the private, quasi-free enterprise economy, then the government borrows and spreads mountains of money around like fertilizer which will stimulate "green shoots" of recovery.

The forgotten key to successful Keynesian policy is a government which has not been borrowing and spending trillions of dollars even during an era of so-called "prosperity." When a government like the U.S. has been propping up "prosperity" with trillions in borrowed money for a decade, then doubling or tripling the "stimulus" in the hopes that the green shoots will be enduring is truly farcical.

If the economy needed several trillion dollars in deficit spending to eke out the meager jobless growth of 2001-2007, then why does anyone think that doubling or tripling that deficit spending will create an enduring boom?

The truth is the U.S. economy has been dependent on Federal stimulus for years, both the indirect stimulus of artificially low interest rates and unlimited liquidity, and the direct spending of hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars.

Even before the financial crisis, the Federal government was borrowing and spending $400 billion a year to prop up "prosperity." All that spending simply papered over the rot at the core of the economy:

1. The primary support of the U.S. economy is consumer spending which is ultimately based on household income and assets.

Earned income has been flat to down for most Americans for years. The median income has been skewed upwards by the top 10% whose earnings have risen significantly. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, real disposable personal income-- income adjusted for inflation and taxes--declined 3.4 percent in the third quarter after increasing 3.8 percent in the second quarter.

In an economy dependent on consumer spending for 70% of GDP, how can GDP rise by 3.5% while personal income plummeted by 3.4%? Assuming that boost in GDP is real and not just statistical legerdemain, then where did it come from? From borrowed money, of course-- the Federal government borrowed and spent over $1.4 trillion in fiscal 2009.

In the good old days of 2002-2007, households would have borrowed and spent hundreds of billions as well. But the consumer, beset by declining assets ($13 trillion lost in the past two years), declining income (see above), falling housing values and worrisome employment trends (17% unemployment/underemployment, broadly measured), is actually cutting back on borrowing: Revolving Consumer Credit Drops 13.1% in August.

Consumer credit decreased at an annual rate of 5-3/4 percent in August 2009. Revolving credit (credit cards) decreased at an annual rate of 13 percent, and nonrevolving credit decreased at an annual rate of 1-1/2 percent--the longest decline in consumer debt since 1991.

So while households are still burdened with almost $2.5 trillion credit card and nonrevolving debt (auto loans, etc.), they are paying debt down, not adding more.

And let's not forget that homeowners pulled out about $5 trillion in home equity in 2001-2007, and the home equity ATM is closed for good. That brings us to:

2. The primary asset in most U.S. households is a home, and home values are still dropping, foreclosures are still rising and the only force keeping the market from falling faster is the Federal government's defacto nationalization of the entire U.S. mortgage market.

Of the $1.5 trillion mortgage securities issued in 2009, a mere 1% ($15 billion) have been issued by banks 99% are backed by the government. The government owns over half the nation's $10 trillion in mortgages via its defacto ownership of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and it has guaranteed virtually all the mortgages originated in the past year via FHA or VA.

The residential mortgage market is now effectively owned lock, stock and barrel by the Federal government and its private "central bank", the Federal Reserve.

Should the Fed and Treasury reduce their subsidies (that wonderful $8,000 giveaway tax credit to new home buyers or anyone claiming to be one), guarantees and outright purchases of mortgages ($1.2 trillion this year alone), then the mortgage market would instantly freeze up or start pricing in the very real risk that housing is not "recovering" and that anyone holding a mortgage could suffer huge losses if real estate continues declining in value.

Option Arm loans in Bay Area - ugly

Of the 10 metro areas nationwide with the most option ARMs, three are in the Bay Area. They are the East Bay counties of Alameda and Contra Costa, the South Bay area of Santa Clara and San Benito counties, and the counties of San Francisco, Marin and San Mateo.

Together, these areas account for the second-most option ARMs in the country

Fitch said 94 percent of borrowers elected to make minimum payments only. The shortfall gets added to their loan balance, which is called negative amortization. The amount they owe can grow substantially.

After five years, or once the loan balance reaches a certain threshold above the original balance, the mortgages "recast" and borrowers must make full principal and interest payments spread over the loan's remaining life. Fitch said that new payments average 63 percent higher than the minimum payments, but could be more than double in some cases.

"When option ARMs recast, the payment shock is much more intense than we've seen (with other types of loans, such as subprime)," said Brown. "That makes them potentially much more damaging."

Unlike subprime loans, which were more commonly used for entry-level homes, option ARMs started out with high balances. In the five-county San Francisco area, option ARMs average about $584,000 and were used to buy homes averaging $823,000.

That means they'll spawn foreclosures among upper-end homes.

"The mid- to high-end real estate market is already stranded right now," "Any sort of extra inventory is not going to be welcome for that market whatsoever."

Option ARMs became widespread starting in 2005, which is why the recasts and higher payments will hit starting in 2010, five years later.

But now, on average, the amount these borrowers owe is 126 percent of their home's value, based on depreciation and not including the effects of negative amortization, Sirotic said.

That could explain the ominously high default rates. Even though most option ARMs have not yet adjusted higher, 27 percent of option ARM loans in the five-county San Francisco metro area are at least 90 days past due or in foreclosure.

The option ARM scenario will unfold over several years, which offers some hope that there may be time to avert a deluge of foreclosures. The bulk of option ARMs recast dates are spread out from 2010 through 2012. Especially for the loans that recast later, it's possible that a solution will arise, either through rising home prices allowing them to refinance, or through extra intervention from the government or lenders to help these borrowers.

"This will be another factor keeping home prices from recovering,"

From 2004 to 2008, almost one-fifth of all mortgages, for both home purchases and refinancing, in the San Francisco and San Jose metro areas were option ARMs - more than double the national average. Option ARMs were even more common in the suburban counties of Sonoma (25% of home loans) and Solano (28%). Though most option ARMs have not yet recast and hit borrowers with higher payments, they are going into default at extremely high rates. One quarter or more of all option ARMs in the regional areas are more than 60 days delinquent or already in foreclosure. Analysts say option ARM borrowers are so underwater that they may be choosing to walk away.

10 Pins for the Stock Market Bubble

August 10, 2009


The "Recession is over" stock market rally is just another bubble awaiting a sharp pin. Here are ten such sharp little pins.

I really hate to pop anyone's bubble, but--oh, why try to hide it, I love popping bubbles, especially stock market, credit and housing bubbles. According to the standard-issue financial pundits (SIFPs), the stock market is not only in a new Bull Market but it's heading higher this month--S&P 500 is shooting to 1,200, guaranteed.

Before you join the euphoria, please consider these 10 sharp bubble-popping pins:

1. Structural unemployment is skyrocketing. Job Losses Moderate:

But structural unemployment worsened. The number of people who've been out of work longer than six months soared by a record 584,000 to 5 million, accounting for more than a third of all unemployment for the first time on record.

"Structural" is a polite way of saying there won't be any jobs for the long-term unemployed this year, next year, or the year after that.

2. The jobless rate declined because the work force shrank. This is typical smoke-and-mirrors statistics, courtesy of your Federal government: as people lose extended unemployment benefits, they are classified as "discouraged" and are no longer counted in the "headline" unemployment number.

Unemployment fell by 267,000 to 14.5 million, while employment fell by 155,000. The labor force declined by 422,000, which means the jobless rate declined because people dropped out of the work force, not because they got jobs. The employment-participation rate fell from 65.7% to 65.5%.

3. Everyone seems to have forgotten we need to create 250,000 jobs a month just to stay even with population growth. So while "only" 250,000 jobs were lost last month--never mind a big chunk of employment was linked to the "cash for clunkers" giveaway--that means we're still 500,000 jobs short of a return to a rising employment scenario.

4. The interest on all the debt the nation is taking on to bail out bankers and "stimulate" the dead credit-bubble model will place a drag on growth far into the future. At the end of March of 2009, Bloomberg reported that, "The U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have spent, lent or committed $12.8 trillion, an amount that approaches the value of everything produced in the country last year." This amount "works out to $42,105 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. and 14 times the $899.8 billion of currency in circulation. The nation’s gross domestic product was $14.2 trillion in 2008.

Even with today's dirt-cheap interest rates, the government spends over $400 billion on interest. Another couple hundred billion and we'll be paying more for interest than we are for Defense or Medicare.

5. Interest rates are set to double. A funny thing happened on the way to borrowing "free money" in the trillions; there isn't enough free money around for everyone to borrow unlimited amounts of it. So there's actually more demand for surplus cash than there is supply of surplus cash. That sets up a supply-demand imbalance which leads to higher costs of borrowing. Nothing fancy here--even the Fed economists understand this:

Seeking Alpha

In a 2003 paper, Thomas Laubach, the US Federal Reserve’s senior economist, calculated the impact on long-term interest rates of rising fiscal deficits and soaring national debt The study is damning because Mr Laubach was the Fed’s economist at the time, going on to become its senior economist between 2005 and 2008, when he stepped down. As a result, the doubling in rates is the US central bank’s own prediction. +3.5% because of rising deficit.

That would imply a sharp rise in the interest payments mentioned above; suddenly, the positive feedback/runaway debt scenario looks not just plausible but inevitable: interest on the national debt rises to $650 billion, equal to the Pentagon/Intelligence and Social Security budgets. As tax revenues plummet then the only way to pay the interest is to borrow more, increasing the interest due.

Repeat annually until insolvency/default. Recall that the stimulus deficit is 13% of the entire U.S. GDP; 5% is widely considered unsustainable; Argentina defaulted when its deficit hit 3% of GDP.

6. Tax revenues are tanking. Government revenue is at its lowest level since the Depression, and most states are on the verge of bankruptcy. Tax revenues cannot be manipulated like unemployment and thus tax revenues and sales taxes are far more accurate measures of economic activity than other metrics.

Raising taxes is politically risky (see "insurrection" and "throw the bums out") so what's the only way to continue funding runaway spending? Print and borrow--which raises interest rates.

7. Normal accounting and reporting rules have been suspended. The U.S. financial markets are still a hall of mirrors; mark-to-market is still a pipe-dream; mark-to-fantasy reigns supreme as the easiest way to prop up insolvent banks' balance sheets.

8. Commercial Real Estate is spiraling round the drain. Even mark-to-fantasy might not save banks when the tsunami of bad CRE loans hits in the coming months. Anyone want a faded-glory, half-empty, money-losing mall or three?

9. Consumers are retrenching generationally, not for a few months. Consumer credit (revolving and non-revolving) dropped at a 4.9% annualized rate in June, double the expected pace, indicating consumers continue retrenching and saving. Total outstanding consumer credit in June was $2,485 billion, $70 billion less than the $2,556 billion in June of 2008.

In the long years of bogus "prosperity," consumer credit grew every month like clockwork. $70 billion isn't much, but it's the start of a trend which essentially dooms consumer-based, over-leveraged economies like the U.S. to years or decades of (at best) meager growth.

10. Residential housing is not healed; it's still bleeding profusely. Nearly half of U.S. mortgages seen underwater by 2011. No collateral (as in, no housing equity) means consumers cannot borrow more money, even if interest remains at absurdly low rates (and it won't).

Lagniappe pin: healthcare "reform" will not lower healthcare costs by any measurable degree. At 16% or 17% of the entire U.S. GDP, healthcare (a.k.a. sick-care) will remain in essence a stupendous tax on the few remaining productive sectors of the U.S. economy.

Recession over, and stock market ready to boom on rising sales and profits? Color me skeptical; 10 or 11 pins are about to be pushed into the latest bubble and we'll see how thick that Bullish membrane really is.

Luxury Housing Sector in Marin County

Luxury Housing Sector in Marin County Looks Up:

The real estate slump experienced last year looks like it’s about to take a turn for the better, especially in places like California which bore the brunt of the downturn. Marin County for one is looking up in terms of its luxury home sector, according to a report from real estate service provider Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage. According to the report:

* There has been an increase in the sale of luxury apartments and houses over the past six months
* Homes are now closing faster, in under 100 days rather than in under 150 days a few months ago.
* The perception that the housing market cannot get any lower than this and that prices are only going to rise upwards has brought about this renewed interest in home ownership.
* People are realizing that low interest rates are soon going to be a thing of the past and that the buyer’s market may not last much longer; so they’re using the low prices to snap up good homes.
* The housing sector is looking up in all cities of Marin County
* Homes are selling for as much as 90 percent of their asking rates, a significant improvement from the 83 percent that was registered a few months ago.

And if you thought these signs of prosperity were being exhibited only by the rich and famous, the overall housing sector in the area is also showing signs of having reached rock bottom.

The median price of a single-family home in Marin in June increased to $800,000, and more homes were sold last month than in May, a real estate tracking firm reported Thursday.

Trouble in Paradise: Marin County - foreclosures double - commercial real estate vacancies top 41%

Marin County commercial real estate vacancies top 41%

While not faring as badly as some California Counties, Marin County, according to the 2000 census, has the highest per capita income in the country, is awash in supply in commercial and residential real estate. Vacancy rates in class A commercial real estate is cited as being over a stunning 41% in San Rafael by the Marin Independent Journal. The Examiner recently reviewed one of the most extensive reviews of current foreclosures throughout Marin County provided by Foreclosure Radar. Foreclosures almost doubled to over 800 residential properties from the 440 cited by the Marin Independent Journal for 2008 (http://www.marinij.com/data/ci_11564640) just five months ago. The 800 plus Marin households cited are currently in pre foreclosure, foreclosure or being auctioned off by banks. The entire housing supply in Marin County according to wikipedia totals 61,000 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marin_County,_California) .

Mortgage experts have often cited some localities in California as being relatively immune from harsh downturns in real estate due to a limited supply of new homes or office buildings due to stringent building codes, zoning and a anti growth stance among the local community. Estimated values for the distressed homes in Marin County ranged from $100k in Novato to a $3.6 mm home in Tiburon an $4mm home in Kentfield. Mark Hanson, Managing Director of the Fieldcheck Group thinks its going to get much worse before it gets better for the mid to high end of the residential market. " I don't think we have begun to see the beginning of this negative equity crisis yet. Its all about who can buy these homes at the higher end and with the home financing market tightening the way it is, the number of buyers that can put down $300k - $400 k cash in order to buy a $1mm plus home is getting smaller and smaller. Historically, 'move up buyers" would take up supply in the high end, but these potential buyers can't sell their homes at their desired prices and therefore can't move. I think we are heading for a castastrophic fall in home values in the upper end of the housing market. " According to the website: www.marinrealestatewiz.com/ , as of May 2009, 19 homes were listed for sale in Ross, with 0 being under contract.

The economic impact of the distressed markets and high upturn in vacancy rates is not good for the County and City government budgets within Marin County as the tax rolls suffer from lower taxes bases when homes are finally sold to receiving little to no income from vacant commercial properties. The inventory of unsold homes continues to grow, actual sales (which triggers precious sales tax revenues for the cities and County) have stalled. Meanwhile the continuing increase in the velocity of foreclosure listings further deteriorates local markets as banks auction off homes for rock bottom prices creating a downward spiral on property values.

Like many Counties around the state, the County of Marin has a large and growing unfunded pension liability with 14 recent retirees receiving over $100k for life from taxpayers. Estimates for unfunded public employee pensions and medical benefits range from $700mm to over $1 billion which means cuts in services and a "crowding out" effect for government services to taxpayers as all monies are used first to payoff cadillac pension and healthcare benefits. Recent statewide initiatives, backed by Governor Schwarznegger, leading Democrats and public employee unions, asked California voters to approve more taxes. Four out of five of these intiatives were soundedly rejected by voters, thus leaving policy makers and government leaders little room to manuever. The mandate and choices are few but one is clear: "cut spending....now." And local government leaders can no longer look to any budget relief from real estate sales as the economy continues its stall and with unemployment statewide at almost 10% and current and unfunded budget deficits soar.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, home prices are seeing significant declines or "reductions" original asking prices from Marin County home sellers . In Tiburon, 28% of homes had to lower their prices close to 20%, In Mill Valley, 34% of homes put up for sale reduced their asking prices, on average by 8%. With multi million dollar homes, these write downs can be costly, particularly given most homeowners put up 20% equity or less to buy their homes. Should prices deteriorate more than 20% or more , many Marin homeowners find themselves in a "negative" equity situation...further fueling homeowners' concerns and heightening the risk of even more and more foreclosures perpetuating deeper declines in property values across the commercial and residential markets. This toxic swirl has already hit the lower end of the Marin residential markets hard in places like Novato, where homes have settled back 40% from their highs two or three years ago.

California is bankrupt

If you make a decent wage (I don't, but many do) then the state income tax is about 10% as well. That rate is also among the highest in the nation.

What we have here is not just cognitive dissonance but pathological disassociation from reality: California is a very high-tax state, with among the highest rates in the nation in virtually every category of taxation. Voters rejected the bogus tax-and-borrow-more propositions for two reasons:

1. The propositions were deceptively written and presented in a ham-handed attempt to mask the fact they weren't tax increases. Voters rejected this incredibly crass attempt to deceive them. Lesson for state politicos: if you want a tax increase, ask for it in plain English.

2. Residents already pay high taxes, and the state has already garnered $40 billion per year in additional funding over this decade. We seem to have received little in the way of improvements for the extra $40 billion a year in state spending. Even in a state with 36 million residents, that is a stupendous sum. Therefore voters desire to send more of their money to a government which has shown little fiscal restraint and precious little oversight of current spending was low.

To understand California's impending bankruptcy, we have to consider these fundamental issues:

1. State, county and city employees are paid (wages and benefits) between 50% and 200% more than equivalent private-sector employees.

2. The California economy's real-world foundations--agriculture, entertainment, technology and tourism--are all in decline or pressured by state policies.

3. Overlapping state regulatory agencies are effectively strangling real-world businesses in favor of high-on-the-food-chain enterprises like attorneys and Web 2.0 firms--businesses which create few jobs and which ultimately depend on highly profitable real-world businesses for their own incomes.

4. The Prop 13 limits on raising property taxes has saved millions from losing their homes due to escalating property taxes even as it has unintentionally created vast injustices.

Let's tackle the last item first. Pundits both in-state and out-of-state are quick to identify not bloated public-employee pay and benefits but low property taxes as the culprit. My wife and I bought our residential property 17 years ago at a cost far below current values and we still pay $10,000 a year. Is that "too low"? If that's too low, then what do these pundits think average wage earners can afford? $20,000 a year? Do they really think $1,660 per month is "reasonable" for property taxes? How much do they pay?

The injustice in the system is obvious but difficult to rectify. To understand why, let's consider the other taxes: income and sales. A rough form of justice is implicit in both: everyone who buys something regardless of their income pays sales tax. Those who buy more are presumably wealthier, hence they pay more sales taxes than those of limited incomes. (Food is exempt from sales tax in California.)

Income tax is highly progressive in California, with moderate-income folks like myself paying modest sums (I paid $513 on adjusted gross income of $30,000) while high-income residents pay a stiff 9-10%. This too carries a readily comprehensible justice: higher income residents can more easily afford higher tax rates as they have more income above subsistance.

But a tax which is $1,200 for for one house and $12,000 for the identical house next door is explicitly unjust. The problem is that the elderly resident of the house paying $1,200 a year might be scraping by on a Social Security check, while the house across the street paying $1,300 a year in property taxes might be long-owned by wealthy pensioners pulling in $10,000 a month.

Meanwhile, the young family who foolishly bought in at the top of the housing bubble next door might be paying $15,000 a year in property taxes even as 65% of their income goes to pay their mortgage and property taxes. (I have friends who pay even more than this stupendous sum for their "fixer-upper" purchased in 2006.)

The only fair way to rectify this structural injustice is to consider the total income (not just taxable income, but all income) and total assets of the residents. Simply raising taxes on low-tax properties will only create new injustices as low-income retirees are forced from their homes by suddenly steep tax increases.

On the other hand, why should residents pulling down $10,000 a month pay 10% of the tax their neighbors pay? That too is unjust.

It seems obvious that some straight-forward adjusting based on income and assets could rectify the worst of the injustices of the current system. Yes, this would require a lot of paper-processing, but isn't justice worth some paper-pushing?

How about something along these lines: if you pay property tax of less than $3,600 a year and your gross income from all sources (including tax-free bonds) exceeds $100,000 a year then your tax jumps to $3,600 a year or 90% of the county's average property tax, whichever is lower.

Look, if you're enjoying an income of $100K or more, I think you can manage $300/month instead of $150/month in property taxes.

If you pay more than $10,000 per year in property tax, the property is worth less than $1 million and your household income from all sources is less than $100,000, then your tax drops to $10,000 per year.

Whatever parameters are set, a fairly limited set of adjustments like the above would rectify the worst injustices of the current system in short order. Yes, some would still pay much less than neighbors while others would pay far more, but some modest attempt at justice would still be worth the effort.

I know all you who work for government and quasi-government agencies like water boards, transit systems and school boards will find this disagreeable, but the vast majority of public employees are paid twice as much (or more) as their private-sector counterparts when benefits are factored in. I know for a fact that clerks in school district offices are paid well over $40,000 a year, with benefits exceeding $20,000 per year, while private-sector clerks with the same skillsets are worth perhaps $22-24,000 in the real world, with minimal pension benefits.

Including rich benefits and pensions, many public-sector employees in California are paid twice or more the market-rate value of their labor.

Since labor costs make up 3/4 of all government budgets, it is obvious the only long-term solution to deficits in states already groaning beneath high taxes is to bring public employee wages and benefits in line with real-world market valuations for that labor.

To date, California's public employee unions are fiercely resisting all but the most feeble reductions in their members' pay and benefits. Given the outsized share of labor costs in all government, this recalcitrance guarantees the state will become insolvent/go bankrupt and literally be unable to meet its payroll.

It is instructive to recall that in 1932, the city of San Francisco reduced its municipal salaries by 25% and limited city jobs to one per household. Note to public-employee unions: that is a real-world start you might do well to accept before even harsher terms are offered.

Overlapping dysfunctional regulations are driving real-world businesses under. Like a prissy spoiled princess, California has turned up its nose at enterprises like making steel (smelly), surfboards (let China worry about fumes), agriculture (uses too much water which I need to keep my lawn green and pool filled), aerospace (there's never enough taxes on the military-industrial complex) and physical technology (that wafer plant is too toxic for our taste, no matter what controls you install).

Oh, and every permit application will cost you big-time. The actual permit--well, what makes you think we'll actually lower ourselves to grant you one? If we do, the fee will hit you like a sucker punch to the gut. Then we'll add inspection fees, business licenses and a swarm of other junk fees. But really, we're "pro-business" here--we love businesses dumb enough to stay here. Sadly, the ranks of sucker corporations seem to be thinning.

As a result, California now depends on top-of-the-food-chain enterprises like attorneys (sue it if has insurance, don't bother if it doesn't), tourism and the horrifically overhyped fraud known as Web 2.0 (a handful of young coders constructing a web business suposedly worth billions but the only source of revenues from now until the sun explodes is advertising). In case nobody noticed, adverts only work on people with jobs and income.

Tinseltown is tanking. The Web is dismantling the film and music industries faster than you can say "Ten bucks to see a freakin' movie?" Unemployment in the film and music industries is rampant and growing. The costs of doing business in california are simply too high to make money.

The illusion of corporate headquartering in California is like a Hollywood set facade. Behind the corporate facade, global giants like Intel are basing most of their employees overseas or in lower-tax states like New Mexico and Oregon. Yes, Silicon Valley is still the place to come for venture capital; and yes, entrepreneurs are still starting companies. But once they need to grow, they have to exit the state to prosper.

The state organs of propaganda will deny all this, but then why are tax receipts down over 40% year over year? Is that because so many new businesses are prospering and hiring people?

The pathetic truth is California got by on a mere $100 billion a year in spending not many years ago and now there is great gnashing of teeth and weeping that the state is ruined if spending doesn't stay at $143 billion a year. If this were true, then how did we get by on $95 billion a mere decade ago? The answer to cutting $42 billion is simple: all agencies must revert to their 2001 budgets.

The housing bubble provided California with one last glorious shot of fantasy. No need to tax and spend prudently--housing will keep going up and the property tax increases are stupendous. No need to make anything tangible any longer--just fill office towers with brokers, attorneys and mortgage sales staff. Property taxes and capital gains from housing will keep rising forever.

Yeah, right. Welcome to reality, California. Either fix your structural problems or prepare your bankruptcy filing.