California Power

From the Sacramento Bee.........

We're No. 8.

For the second year in a row, California was home to the world's eighth-largest economy in 2006, according to statistics released Tuesday. California as recently as 2002 was ranked fifth, a rating that was touted by state officials as a sign of the state's vigor. Lately, though, the state has slipped in the rankings because of fluctuations in currency values and the rapid-fire growth of China.

But the state's economy has been growing faster than the U.S. average. And California's economy is still 60 percent larger than that of Texas, the second-largest in the nation. The state's gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic output, was measured at $1.73 trillion in 2006, just behind Italy but well ahead of Canada.