Five days ago a great white hope appeared for the great bankrupt Golden State (Baa1/A-), in the form of $2 billion in GO bonds, which were supposed to be promptly syndicated via underwriters JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley. This would have been the first bond sale for California since November: a critical milestone as the state creeps ever closer to a full-on default. Unfortunately, the creeping just turned into a casual jog after Jane Wells (@janewells) just tweeted that California has cancelled its bond sale “after legislature fails to approve cash management flexibility bill [the] Treasurer said he needed to attract investors.”And seriously, did California think it would succeed where so many other high yield issuers have recently failed?

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