Are Ben Bernanke and Paul Krugman Running California, Too?

Ben Bernanke and Paul Krugman must love California's economy.

Like Bernanke's game-plan of monetizing the debt by printing money, California is stamping out IOU's to make its payments. As for adhering to Krugman's Utopian vision of unchecked deficit spending, well, California appears to have set the record.

But don't have either of them try to explain any of these fun facts from the world's largest Democrat-controlled nuthouse:

• One of every eight workers in California is jobless.

• The state is borrowing $40 million a day from the federal government to pay unemployment benefits, but won't change any of the formulas used to calculate and fund those benefits.

• Cali's debt on unemployment benefits alone is projected to hit $10.3 billion this year and $16 billion by 2012. Last year, the state paid out $11.3 billion while collecting only $4.2 billion.

• The interest on that debt alone will require a $362 million payment to DC in little more than nine months.

• Fixing the imbalance requires doing one of two things: paying out less benefits or raising employer contributions. California's Democrat legislators have resisted doing either despite massive increases in benefits paid.

Of course, the delightful voters of California decided to reelect the very same nincompoops who got them into this mess, so relief is unlikely to come anytime soon.

Next year's budget deficit has been estimated at $12 billion on the low side and $19 billion on the high side... [observers question] if he will be willing to make state employees work longer to earn their full pensions, especially since they spent $30 million to get him elected.

Brown has promised to make the "budget process transparent..." [but nothing] about this first two days has been transparent. Will he stand up to unions, restore cuts made to schools and universities and where will he find the money to invest in green jobs?

Maybe he'll conjure some unicorns out of thin air... and the unicorns will poop diamonds and green jobs and food stamps and windmills and fairy dust! I mean, this is Cali-freaking-fornia!

Oh, I forgot. Brown also has to deal with a $500 billion unfunded pension liability which has some calling California "America's Greece".

I think they're being far too kind. Greece is Europe's California.

Democrats: if they weren't in power, they'd be good only as comic relief.