Greece vs. California – Comparing fiscal crises within the monetary Unions

California is not Greece – but why not? The answer to this question seems simple. To be precise, there are two simple answers. First, California is not Greece because the U.S. state is a vastly successful economy, on its own among the ten biggest economies in the world, good at producing blockbusters, software and computer lifestyle products that cannot easily be replaced by cheaper providers in emerging markets. Unfortunately for California, the private riches goes with public poverty. A populist political system allows voters to act collectively like a schizophrenic person: hedonistic and lavish as regards their own private expenditure, prudish and insanely stingy when it comes to state expenditure for public goods. However well the private economy did before the crisis, it seemed to make Californians just more inclined to starve the beast that is their state government. It has forced the executive repeatedly to resort to creative accounting and outright forging of figures to pass a budget.