The relationship between the people and their money in California is such that you can pluck almost any city at random and enter a crisis.
San Jose has the highest per capita income of any city in the United States, after New York. It has the highest credit rating of any city in California with a population over 250,000.
It is one of the few cities in America with a triple-A rating from Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, but only because its bondholders have the power to compel the city to levy a tax on property owners to pay off the bonds. The city itself is not all that far from being bankrupt.
― Michael Lewis, Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World
