It's a wonderful state

Mimicking the run on the banks in the iconic holiday movie It's a Wonderful Life, the run on Florida's investment fund seems to have slowed down considerably:

Local governments withdrew about $560 million of their money from Florida's state-run investment pool Friday, but the beleaguered fund's managers were pleased that figure was about half the amount from a day before.

BlackRock Inc. officials said some calm appeared to be returning a day after the fund reopened from a freeze. BlackRock was hired to restore order to the biggest fund of this kind in the country.

Well, compared with yesterday's $1.2 billion in withdrawals, I certainly can see cause for optimism. [/snark]

Apparently, so can the BlackRock folks, who have a rather inflated opinion of themselves:

Simon Mendelson, the chief of the BlackRock team, pointed out that withdrawals Friday were well within the firm's expectations.

"Our expectation is those outflows will gradually decline over time and stabilize," Mendelson said. "Our sense is we've done a nice job of restoring calm; we have not yet restored full confidence. That is our job."

That confidence is going to be hard to come by, if Leon County (where Tallahassee is located, for the non-Wang™-centric readers) is any indication:

After Florida's state-run investment pool was frozen last week, Leon County Schools came perilously close to not being able to pay many of its 4,000-plus employees.

Superintendent Jackie Pons found out about 6:30 p.m. Nov. 29 — the day the pool was frozen — that he wouldn't be able to access nearly $46 million in the pool. The district also couldn't get its hands on more than $30 million in a Tampa investment account without 24 hours notice.

And he had to make payroll the next day.

The district was able to pay its people only after securing an after-hours loan for $10 million from Capital City Bank, Pons said in an interview Thursday.

[...]

Gov. Charlie Crist, Attorney General Bill McCollum and Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink released a statement saying they're pleased that new deposits were made.

"We hope to see continued deposits from fund investors and remind local governments that all new subscriptions are fully available for withdrawal under the new plan," the statement read.

Pons, however, said he has lost confidence in the pool.

It's yet another indicator that Florida's economic health is poor, and getting worse. And yet "leaders" like Speaker of the House Marco Rubio (R-Miami Lakes) want to continue to cut taxes, in the style of Their Hero Jeb! Bush.

Thanks for running Florida into the ground, Republicans. The fault lies squarely on your shoulders. Come next Election Day, I hope the blame does, too.

Hee haw, indeed.