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Megan McArdle

Megan McArdle - Megan McArdle is a senior editor for The Atlantic who writes about business and economics. She has worked at three start-ups, a consulting firm, an investment bank, a disaster recovery firm at Ground Zero, and The Economist. More

Megan was born and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and yes, she does enjoy her lattes, as well as the occasional extra-dry skim-milk cappuccino. Her checkered work history includes three start-ups, four years as a technology project manager for a boutique consulting firm, a summer as an associate at an investment bank, and a year spent as sort of an executive copy girl for one of the disaster-recovery firms at Ground Zero … all before the age of 30.

While working at Ground Zero, Megan started Live From the WTC, a blog focused on economics, business, and cooking. She may or may not have been the first major economics blogger, depending on whether we are allowed to throw outlying variables such as Brad Delong out of the set. From there it was but a few steps down the slippery slope to freelance journalism. She has worked in various capacities for The Economist, where she wrote about economics and oversaw the founding of Free Exchange, the magazine's economics blog. She has also maintained her own blog, Asymmetrical Information, which moved to The Atlantic, along with its owner, in August 2007.

Megan holds a bachelor's degree in English literature from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago. After a lifetime as a New Yorker, she now resides in northwest Washington, D.C., where she is still trying to figure out what one does with an apartment larger than 400 square feet.

Can We Really Bail Out California?

By Megan McArdle
Jun 11 2009, 1:46 PM ET Comment

So California's fiscal doomsday clock is now officially set at one to midnight.  The state has just 50 days until financial meltdown, according to its comptroller.   The consensus seems to be that the Federal government simply has no choice but to bail it out.

But what happens if we bail California out?  New York had a fifteen billion dollar budget deficit; why should the Empire State struggle to balance its budget while its citizens' federal tax dollars leak westward?  Why not Texas, or Florida?  Why not all the states, for that matter?  And if the Federal government does bail them out, why bother with any fiscal restraint at all?

I'm pretty sure that the feds can afford to bail out California.  I'm pretty sure they can't afford to bail out fifty states who have learned that if they are just intransigent enough about spending more money than they make, Uncle Sugar will come in and pay the bill.

 Presumably, the way you avoid this is by putting harsh conditions on the money.  But what harsh conditions can the Feds impose?  California has the largest and most powerful Congressional delegation.  And I'm struggling to think of any penalty the Feds can hand down without alienating critical constituents like the public sector labor unions.


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