Who Are America's PIIGS?

Red States?  If Europe were run like America, federal spending would appear to mirror the U.S.:

The difference between the U.S. and Europe is that when the Greek economy "pulls a Mississippi" (or perhaps I should say, when Mississippi "pulls a Greece"), the EU and the U.S. have 180-degree opposite reactions. Over here, we calmly write checks to Mississippi in the form of Medicaid and unemployment insurance, no questions asked. Europe has no comparable "Peripheraid" for its weak peripheral states. Instead, it has chaos.

Michael Cembalest, the JP Morgan analyst and author of the my favorite new chart about monetary unions -- it's not a crowded field, admittedly -- passes along another clever graph which shows fiscal transfers (don't worry, that's just another word for money) between the rich California-Connecticut-Illinois-New Jersey-New York quintuple and poorer states like Tennessee. If similar, seamless transfers existed in the EU, the rich north would have to send to Portugal and Greece at least an additional 30 cents for every dollar they paid in taxes, year after year after year.

So that north-south divide works on each side of the Atlantic.  Maybe the GOP has a future in Southern Europe.  The deal here is that the federal government meets the minimal needs of the population in states that can't be bothered to take care of their own people.