Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
To read more about the garage-workshop culture of Silicon Valley go to
www.folklore.org
,
which covers the crashes and personality clashes that made geek history.
Recent Recessions & Shaky Recovery
Silicon Valley's internet revolution rewired California's entire economy, so when the dot-
com bubble burst in 2000, it plunged the entire state's economy into chaos. That same year
also brought widespread power shortages and rolling blackouts to California, which were
caused by Enron's illegal manipulation of markets.
In the controversial recall election of 2003, Californians voted to give action-movie star
Arnold Schwarzenegger a shot at fixing things. Although a Republican, Schwarzenegger
often governed from California's political center. He supported legislation that helped
California lead the nation in cutting greenhouse emissions, even as US President and fel-
low Republican George W Bush rejected the Kyoto Protocol.
Then came the unraveling of the US subprime mortgage-lending crisis, which triggered
the stock-market crash of 2008 and mired the nation in a recession with massive unem-
ployment. By 2010 California was so broke that it had issued IOU slips to creditors, and
once-again Governor Jerry Brown (a Democrat) was forced to make massive cuts to social
services, education and state parks funding. It took several years for the state's economy to
start making a real recovery, complicated by the problems of long-term unemployment and
a worrying number of years in a row of severe drought. But don't worry: California has al-
ways been a comeback kid. Just you wait and see.
TIMELINE
20,000 BC
First people start crossing from Asia into North America via the Bering Strait land bridge. The
bones of a human found on California's Santa Rosa Island date back 13,000 years.
AD 1542
