Californians Should Have Such A Chip On Their Shoulders These Days

The NYT's Adam Nagourney has a great story about the comeback of California, and its Governor Jerry Brown, who started his second stint as governor of the state in 2010, when it was famously the poster child for public fiscal collapse.

The state’s budget problems are largely resolved, at least for the short term. Mr. Brown is the dominant figure in Sacramento, strengthened by overwhelming Democratic control of the Legislature and the decline of the Republican Party. He has pushed through major initiatives on education financing and prison reorganization. Even Republicans say his re-election next year seems considerably more than likely.

“Some people were ridiculing California, and some were calling it a failed state,” Mr. Brown, a Democrat, said in an interview. “The unemployment came down from 12.2 to 8.5. Real estate is rebounding. There’s a lot of confidence out there. That’s what happened.”

There are a lot of factors here.

Our Rob Wile went through several of them back in January: The real estate economy has had its natural cyclical rebound, the tech sector has continued to boom, and the Democrats have managed to get a supermajority in Sacramento, which has made getting things done a lot easier than in other states (or certainly in Washington).

But the bottom line is that Californians should be really psyched about how their state has recovered, as the state was really seen as a basket case not long ago.

Mitt Romney famously compared California to Greece during the 2012 campaign.

Major bond investors were talking about the danger of California debt.

Even some well known business websites were writing eulogies for the state (whoops!).

So take a bow California.

You've made a stirring comeback and made the rest of the world look like idiots.