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September 03, 2012
LOTB Update: California's Facebook Eggs Fail To hosta
From the weekend's WSJ:
Governor Jerry Brown's wing-and-a-prayer budget in January predicted the Facebook IPO would help to close the Golden State's $9 billion deficit with a $2.5 billion tax windfall over five years.
...
Sorry, Jerry. Early this month the state's Legislative Analyst's Office reported that because of the near 50% decline in Facebook stock from its $38 a share offering price, "hundreds of millions of dollars of income tax revenue assumed in the state budget plan are at risk." It'll be even worse if other young tech companies don't go public or do so at lower valuations. The Facebook falloff comes after state tax collections in the first half of 2012 had already fallen $3.5 billion below earlier estimates.
Guess what, Californians. Your magnificent state government would never dream of cutting expenses to make up for this revenue shortfall. Lucky you.