So when Arnie came, hat in hand, begging for like $8 billion dollars to repair the disaster that is California, we snickered a little. Yes, we admit it, we snickered. Ok, ok, municipal bankruptcy is not funny at all. We know. (Sheesh, you guys have a bunch of Munis or what?)
All that as background should tell you exactly why we say "What the fuck, Arnie," when we see something like this:
California sold $5 billion in short-term municipal notes Thursday in a deal that helps the state meet its cash needs and one that was upsized twice in the final 24 hours because of strong investor demand.
The state will return to the market at a later date to raise the additional $2 billion toward its $7 billion total cash-flow borrowing needs for fiscal 2008-09, Bill Lockyer, California's state treasurer, said in a statement.
To woo enough investors to take on such a large block of debt, California set the initial yield ranges to relatively high levels for short-term paper. Demand for the offering was sufficient that the final yields were at the low end of ranges first quoted to individual investors.
This really sucked because we were so revved up making fun of California that any success on their part totally killed our schadenfreunde buzz. Weak, man. Seriously. Weak.
I guess Cramer's totally generic and borderline irresponsible "Go Munis" message the other day managed somehow to hit home.
California Increases Offering Twice to Meet Demand for Munis [WSJ]
