Matthew Yi of the SF Comical reports that the state may need to borrow up to $14 billion or was that $20 billion. It's hard to tell in an article that begins to sound like a TARP strategy session:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature could ease the crunch by quickly balancing the budget, which is projected to be at least $8 billion in the red, or $14 billion short if voters reject the ballot measures - which appears likely, according to a poll released Thursday.

If state leaders become mired in another months-long budget impasse, however, California will find it difficult to borrow "anywhere close to the needed amounts," the report said.

In addition, California may have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in additional borrowing costs as a result of the banking crisis. In previous years, the state was able to secure lower interest rates by purchasing loan guarantees from commercial banks.

But banks have told state finance officials that they can at best back about $1 billion in loans, far short of the state's borrowing needs, said Tom Dresslar, a spokesman for state Treasurer Bill Lockyer.

In other words, if we are good boys and girls and pass all of the governor's propositions, we will only be $8 billion in the red. Note that one of these propositions has us borrow $5 billion from future lottery earnings. If Wonks Anonymous is right in his calculations that means that we avoid $3 billion in borrowing if we agree to redirect funds from education and tie the hands of future legislators with spending cap mumbo jumbo.

And it is less than likely that the banks are going to go along with this and, if we do need to balance the budget, we haven't got a prayer that the state's Republican party will go along with it. Unless, that is, we agree to immediately arrest every Hispanic in the state and deport them to Mexico where the Mexican government can sort them out.

This does not make the special election agenda any more attractive to Wonks Anonymous but a thought does occur to him:

This is all chicken feed when compared with the money tossed at the financial industry by TARP.

Can we dissolve the state government and reincorporate as a hedge fund? A California bankruptcy would bring the financial system to its knees.

Maybe the Federal Government could fire the current state government?