"California's unemployment rate climbed to 11.5 percent in May, the highest in modern record-keeping, the US Department of Labor reported Friday..."
"California, which is struggling to close a $24.3 billion budget gap, faces the prospect of a "multi-notch" downgrade in its credit rating if the state's legislature fails to act quickly to produce a budget, ..."
Guys this is rate the US Labor Department is giving, it is way higher when you actually count just the people doing part-time and like 10-15 hrs a week, they don't count these people, when US Department reports these numbers you can almost double them to find out the real truth of how many people are not working.
I'd say California is close to 20% Unemployment rate, this is getting close to Great Depression numbers back in the 30's. As for the stock market we should be getting fresh new lows, how are they gonna prop up the stock market if more and more people are losing their jobs? End of the year is looking very bad for the states, I'm predicting a final bear market bottom around March of 2010 (Early 2010). California is the worst of all the states, they will have to declare bankruptcy on their debts sometime, as the US dollar should follow early afterwards, Ben Bernake and Co. are just delaying the inevitable at this point...
In the near future I'm expecting news to show that California will not be able to pay its debt payments, this should lead to another sell off in the stock market, the market will most likely start heading down before this news hits.
