Who should we listen to?

The other number is 5.7 percent. That’s the unemployment rate for the Washington/Arlington/Alexandria metro area and just so happens to be lowest among large metropolitan areas in the entire country. In 2010 the DC metro area added 57,000 jobs, more than any in the nation, and now boasts the hottest market for commercial office space. In other words: DC is booming. You can see it in the restaurants opening all over North West, the high prices that condos fetch in the real estate market and the general placid sense of bourgeois comfort that suffuses the affluent upper- and upper-middle-class pockets of the region.

Christopher Hayes talking about the social distance between Washington DC and the periphery. Sometime in the near future the federal tax collectors are coming to California to collect the debt service on their high living ways. I wonder if Jerry Brown is going to oblige. HT Kevin Drum

Here is one escape:  Utah Considers Return to Gold, Silver Coins  Combine that with an all consumption tax and cash economy,  how would the IRS ever collect?

Or take the Lockyer approach and pay our federal debt service with Laser money.  California having the largest economy, we could overtake the Dollar with the Laser as the national currency!  Then Krugman would have to write editorials in the LA Times complaining that Washignton DC is broke.

If California went Laser then Texas would be the sap, and they likely would adopt their own currency.