California Plans Sale of Buildings to Raise Cash

Mark down February 22nd on your iPhone or BlackBerry calender. That's the day when California, desperate to raise money to bridge an ever expanding budget gap (now in the very bad neighborhood of around $20 billion) plans on selling 17 state-owned buildings. Apparently this is a trend: California is just the latest state to resort to selling off real estate in order to raise money to replace dwindling tax revenue. But its proposed sale -- a total of 9 million square feet of office space valued at around $2 billion -- is by far the largest, according to the Associated Press.

The problem is, selling anything when a gun is to your head is never really a good idea. And, right now, California has sort of a nuclear missile aimed at it.