My favorite Carl Hiaasen book is a thin, non-fiction one. (Never could get into his satire fiction -- something in me that rejects ... "silly", and even played as satire, Hiaasen's fictions to me just seem ... silly.)

I have "Kick Ass" on my shelves as well, and prefer his newspaper columns about Florida follies. Like this one:

It wasn't surprising that President Barack Obama came to Florida to push his economic stimulus package, because no place in the United States has fallen so hard, so fast.

And when the mega-recession finally ends, Florida will be one of the last places in the country to turn itself around. That's because other states have actual industry, while our employment base depends fatally on double-digit population growth and, to a lesser extent, tourism.

Everything was going gang-busters when a thousand people a day were moving here, but now the stampede is over, and the jig's up. Without fresh meat for the housing market, Florida basically hasn't got an economy.

Developers have controlled state and county governments for so long that no Plan B exists. Lost and clueless, lawmakers desperately hack away at public budgets while clinging to the hope that boom times will return.

For good reason, Florida has become the poster child for America's fiscal disintegration. We stand at the top of the leaderboard in rising unemployment, foreclosures and, of course, mortgage fraud.

Where else could a man step out of prison and straight into a job peddling adjustable-rate home loans to buyers with virtually no credit?

As The Miami Herald has documented, more than 10,000 convicted felons were welcomed into the mortgage business under the unwatchful eye of the state's Office of Financial Regulation. Believe it or not, many of those felons went on to perpetrate dishonest deeds and victimize gullible citizens.

The banks grabbed their piece of the action, too. Every major institution now standing in line for a taxpayer handout was an eager player in Florida's real-estate frenzy, throwing money at just about anybody who asked for a loan. If you had a pulse and a checking account, you could find a mortgage.

For a while it seemed like everyone caught the fever. Couples who could barely afford one house rushed out and bought two or three more, planning to flip the properties for a quick windfall. Rabid speculation warped the market and, by 2005, the price of most homes bore no credible relation to their true value.

A few experts voiced alarm, but nobody listened. The history of Florida is that of greed run amok, and old habits die hard.
...
For a state with 18 million residents, there are relatively few large factories or assembly plants, and not much high-tech enterprise. Agriculture -- the one major sector that's not tied to population growth -- has been waning for years, as vast tracts of groves and farm fields have been bought up by developers.

Yet besides orange juice, veggies and cattle, we don't produce much of anything that the rest of the country wants. The state never made an effort to diversify because it didn't have to.

As long as people kept pouring in, nobody worried. For the most part, those who migrated here wound up with jobs that directly or indirectly depended on more people coming.

It was, in fact, a Ponzi scheme of phenomenal proportions.

Now, lacking that daily fix of a thousand new warm bodies, Florida's in deep trouble. This is inevitable when the mechanism of your economy is modeled on that of a cancer cell.

If you love the state, as native Hiaasen obviously does, maybe you look at this current crisis as a potential opportunity: afterall, they say, until a loved one hits rock bottom, they never open their eyes to the big picture of what got them there.

Tossing big bucks Florida's way won't end their intrinsic economic problems, anymore than bailing out AIG for a third fourth time will help the patient live. There's something to be said for a dignified death, after all, and looking toward the survivors to pick up the flag and further the cause. Pumping fresh life into dead ideas that can't subsist on their own -- both Floridians in it for the long haul, and AIG shareholders who value the freedom of the market should acknowledge for their own long-term health that the sun also sets.