Radioactive Man

My Eyes! Zee Fiat Money Does Nothing!

California announces plan to pay future bills in

"SchwarzeCheddas"

Guarantees new currency to be

"Ten times manlier than punk-ass 'real' money!"

From the NYT:

California to Pay Creditors With I.O.U.’s
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

LOS ANGELES — Signaling that California is slipping deeper into financial crisis, the state’s controller said Wednesday that his office would soon be forced to issue i.o.u.’s to scores of the state’s creditors, the first time since 1992, when 100,000 state employees were paid with them.

Before that budget crisis — which pales in comparison to the current shortfall, even with inflation adjustments — the last time California issued the documents was during the Depression, something the controller, John Chiang, alluded to in his news release announcing the impending action.

“Next Wednesday we start a fiscal year with a massively unbalanced spending plan and a cash shortfall not seen since the Great Depression,” Mr. Chiang said in a written statement. “The State’s $2.8 billion cash shortage in July grows to $6.5 billion in September, and after that we see a double-digit freefall. Unfortunately, the State’s inability to balance its checkbook will now mean short-changing taxpayers, local governments and small businesses.”

The issuing of the i.o.u.’s would reflect the state’s lack of cash flow and its legislature’s inability to agree on a way to close a roughly $24 billion budget gap, as tax revenues have continued to fall in the state. On Wednesday, as Mr. Chiang made his announcement, legislators continued to debate ways to close the gap in preparing for a vote on a budget presented by Democrats that was all but certain to fail on the floor.

Democrats want to close the gap with a mix of vast cuts to social programs and an increase to cigarette, oil drilling and car taxes; Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has vowed to veto any and all tax hikes, and his party’s lawmakers agree with him.
...

Of course, since the Golden State can't change its name, pack up the Buick and sneak away to another town under the cover of darkness, Schwarzenegger's IOU's are a "promise to pay", backed, presumably, by the full faith and credit of the State of California.

Which means, for all intents and purposes, that Schwarzenegger's California is about to start printing its own money.

First, when I was just a wee driftglass way back in an era when such impossibly arcane topics as "government" and "civics" were required subjects in the public schools, I believe one of my evil, socialist, "not a really, really, for-real job" teachers might have given me the idea that the United States government and the Federal Reserve generally frowned on that sort of thing.

Second, if Ahnuld gets away with it, I shudder to think what Exciting!New! financial shell game Da Mare will announce a week later

to "pay" for his 2016 Daleympics.