Spring 2009, Volume 50, Number 1

EXPLODING POPULATION TAXES INFRASTRUCTURE, CONTRIBUTES TO BUDGET PROBLEMS

By Maria Fotopoulos, CAPS Senior Writing Fellow

Nonstop bad economic and financial news has rocked the world in the last six months.

For days it was the $50 billion Bernie Madoff ponzie scheme which conned more than 13,000 investors; another day it was news that $1 billion of cash assets on a company’s books was fictitious. Other days brought outrage over $18.4 billion paid for Wall Street bonuses when financial firms received billions in taxpayer bailout dollars.

Earlier, there was news of the $150 billion bailout for insurance giant AIG, followed by the whopper $700 billion bailout, mostly for banks, an auto bailout and the double-whopper serving at the start of the year of an economic stimulus plan by the new administration and a mortgage bailout plan.

California, with record unemployment topping 10 percent in January, grappled with a seemingly continuously growing budget deficit, $42 billion at last report.

Plainly, there’s enormous stress and pain in our communities.

Events are unfolding and unraveling so quickly though, that with all of the news coming at us so hard and so fast, it’s nearly impossible to track and process. That’s made all the more difficult by the echo chamber: the world as we know it will come to an end if the latest scheme by the government is not implemented posthaste.

While the pressure to “get it doneâ€