You couldn't make it up dept. no.88: California for sale

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Or at least the state is turning out all its pockets to see if it has anything worth selling that will help stop the most immediate holes in its budget: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/05/schwarzenegger-san-quentin-colisseum.html . Next step, bankruptcy.

Meanwhile, the Italian banks, which are bulging at the seams with liquidity, are backing Sergio Marchionne's attempt to take over Chrysler and the whole overseas GM operation, including Latin America and South Africa. It appears that while most British and American banks are afraid to move for fear of bankruptcy, the financial institutions of Italy, Spain and, believe it or not, Turkey, having kept faith with the original vocation of banks, have so much investment capital they do not know what to do with it. Watch out for San Quentin being turned into a Turkish prison. Then Alan Parker can do Midnight Express II next door to Hollywood.

Comments

[stigandnasty919.livejournal.com]

Italy and Turkey, yes. But with the huge exception of Santander the Spanish Banks are also in pretty poor shape. There are a lot of local or regional Banks in Spain who are in desperate trouble. Their property boom was even more extreme that in the UK.

I think the credit for the relatively good position the Italian and Turkish Banks find themselves in goes mainly to their governments who did not succumb to the temptation to remove or liberalise regulation on liquidity.

By rejecting the movement towards "efficient use of capital" which was such a part of the plans of the rest of the developing worlds, they missed out on some of the ecconomic growth the rest of the world enjoyed and as a result are not suffering so much with the current contraction.

[dustthouart.livejournal.com]

LOL. You're still an Italian citizen, right? Hey, we could make it work, baby. ;)

I kid, but my parents actually said to me recently that it's a good thing that I'm dating a Canadian because that way if America sinks and Canada doesn't, or vice versa, each of us has an in to the other place.

Romantic investment diversification?