Do Glenn Reynolds & Spencer Jakab of FT really think California needs a torturing dictator to keep spending under control?

Spencer Jakab of the Financial Times offers the blog post "California and Kazakhstan - just who is the underdog?" (peekURL.com/zyurdj8). Referring to a letter that California treasurer Bill Lockyer sent to Goldman Sachs complaining about them marketing default swaps that "wrongly brand our bonds as a greater risk than those issued by such nations as Kazakhstan", Spencer Jakob says:

...Californians may derive their hazy image of Kazakhstan from Borat, Sacha Baron Cohen's satirical take on a country where he claims the main forms of entertainment include the "running of the Jew". The real Kazakhstan, although not problem-free, looks fairly solid compared to California and many other states - a fact that should spook investors in America's $2,800bn municipal bond market.

Needless to say, Glenn Reynolds links to it ("BORAT GETS LAST LAUGH? Financial Health: California vs. Kazakhstan", pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/97122).

This is all jolly great fun, except for the fact that millions of Americans live in California, and the "free trade, loose immigration" types like Reynolds and the Financial Times favor policies that have hurt we millions of Americans in California (and everyone else in the U.S. except for a select few).

And, of course, there's that part about Kazakhstan not being "problem-free". See, among many others, "Kazakhstan failing to prevent torture of detainees: rights group" (link) from just a couple weeks ago and referring to Amnesty International.

I don't think Reynolds and the FT would favor a torturing dictator just as long as he was in favor of fiscal austerity, but...