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Traders said there was no single catalyst for the stumble, though selling started early and accelerated into Thursday’s closing bell, dragging the Dow into negative territory, down 0.1%, for 2014.

Most film and television productions turned down for a subsidy from the state of California over a recent four-year period ended up shooting in other states or countries, according to a new report released Wednesday.

However, Tesla’s on-again, off-again gigafactory flirtations with its home state have exasperated some outspoken critics of the way that California does business. Venture capitalist Tim Draper has made Tesla’s rebuff of California a talking point for his controversial “Six Californias” initiative. Losing Tesla strikes him as a smack-your-forehead example of the state’s dysfunctional business and political culture.

All well and good, but what about businesses that don’t qualify for tax credits? You would think legislators would recognize that with the rash of requests for tax help they are dealing with this year that something is wrong with the business climate.

The big pension fund said it was the fourth time in five years that it has earned double-digit investment returns. CalPERS is still trying to claw its way back from the crippling multibillion-dollar losses of 2008-09, when the housing bubble burst and the financial markets crashed.

On Thursday, Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation creating a $420 million tax credit for aerospace contractor Lockheed Martin. The bill also includes a clause that could provide a tax sweetener for Tesla Motors, if the company decides to built its planned $5 billion factory in California.

A 4 percent sales tax credit on the sale of manufacturing and research and development equipment has gone into effect in California. The credit will last eight years. 

The Legislature went home for a month Thursday, but not before handing aerospace giant Lockheed Martin Corp. a controversial $420-million tax break.

Branded as a sweetheart deal for Lockheed, the bill sailed through the Assembly and Senate — but only after critics forced state officials to pledge that they would seek a similar incentive for aerospace rival Northrop Grumman.

Currently, Los Angeles has a living wage ordinance that requires that city contractors pay at least $12.28 per hour without health benefits, or slightly less with health benefits, according to its Bureau of Contract Administration website.

Of the nearly 64,000 who received a single associate degree in the 2012-13 academic year, the median student took 4.1 years, the nonprofit Campaign for College Opportunity said.

About 215,000 state employees will be seeing a few dollars more in their next paycheck. Some workers say getting the more than four percent raise in one lump sum would be better.

An independent hearing officer Monday dealt a major setback to Los Angeles’ effort to rein in public employee pension costs, concluding that elected officials violated labor law when they voted to roll back retirement benefits for new civilian workers without negotiating with labor leaders..

The Senate Finance and Governance Committee approved the measure, Assembly Bill 2389, but only after adding amendments to limit its effect on the state’s treasury, which proponents said could undermine hopes of gaining the project in competition with other states and companies.

There’s also an element of hypocrisy. The state’s Democratic politicians have uniformly rejected criticism that the state’s high taxes and dense regulatory thicket discourage job-creating investment. But if that’s true, why then do they then offer subsidies to certain favored industries to keep them from fleeing . . . Rather than handing our money to particular industries or companies, wouldn’t it be fairer – and more seemly – to make California more attractive to all would-be job creators and avoid the shadowy politics of targeted subsidies?

Moody’s Investors Service, one of the nation’s largest credit rating organizations, upgraded its rating of California’s $86 billion in general obligation debt Wednesday, citing the state’s “rapidly improving financial position.”