"pretzel palace"

[Dan Goncharoff]

Jerry Brown yesterday said of California's budget "It’s a pretzel palace of
incredible complexity.”

I have never before seen the phrase used before in the context of financial
complexity.

GB shows a hit in Asia Sentinel from 2006:

"Restructuring negotiations were colored by controversy over a bewildering
corporate pretzel palace that included a shadowy series of banks in the
Cook Islands and Cayman Islands and countless legal challenges..."

It's talking about corporate structure instead of budgeting, but similar
enough for my taste.

The use of the phrase implies to me, however, that it is expected to be
familiar to an Asian audience in 2006. Does anyone have any insight into
the use of the phrase?

DanG

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