Bill Watkins, Ph.D.
Bill Watkins, Founding Director of CERF, has been providing accurate, unflinching forecasts about the economic pulse of California, western states and the rest of the United States, for more than 15 years. He is a plain-spoken, no-holds-barred economist who studies the data and tells it like it is.
“Bill Watkins has the enviable ability to provide the simple-to-grasp explanations that are based on rigorous analysis of complex things. Sometimes it seems that we within the academy forget that our job is to make things easier to understand, not more difficult.”
Read BioCERF Blog: Posts by Bill Watkins
The Los Angeles Times has an article today with the scare headline “$69 million in California welfare money drawn out of state.” This is the most recent of several of these types of articles, not necessarily in the Times, the purpose of which seems to be publicizing the claim that welfare recipiensts are wasting the… Read more
We have some economic news out today. 453,000 filed initial unemployment claims, and the second quarter GDP estimate is 1.7 percent growth. The news people are practically ecstatic over this, proclaiming it’s good news. The markets seem to agree. Each of the stock markets are up right now. True enough, the unemployment claims are down… Read more
I get the following question, or something like it all the time. This time it came by e-mail. I thought I’d post my response. Here’s the question: When looking at the economy, unemployment, and job growth…..what consideration is given to the impact of the decline of jobs and/or elimination of jobs in the public sector… Read more
California has pending legislation, AB 2529, to require an economic impact analysis of proposed new regulation. Its opponents correctly point out that AB 2529 will delay and increase the cost of new regulation. There will be lawsuits and arguments over the proper methodology and over assumptions. It is not easy to complete a thorough and… Read more
Last night we had a faculty meeting. One of the issues that came up was parking congestion. The University is growing, and this year there have been some problems finding parking spots. More parking was suggested, but the number of parking spaces isn’t the problem. The problem is that the University gives parking permits for… Read more
Here‘s Bloomberg’s report on today’s data release. One paragraph has caused the Drudge Report to run the headline “GOV’T MAKES IT UP: JOB NUMBERS ‘ESTIMATED’ FOR WEEK…” (Caps by Drudge). Here’s the paragraph: For the latest reporting week, nine states didn’t file claims data to the Labor Department in Washington because of the federal holiday… Read more
Mankiw has a post on the administration’s proposed changes in the tax treatment of investment. As usual, he is right on. The proposed treatment amounts to a zero interest loan, at a time when interest rates are already remarkably close to zero: However, the impact will be relatively modest. Notice that expensing merely accelerates deductions.… Read more
California Watch has a piece on the chief justice of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Seems he wants poor judges. I have a problem with that. Judges come from the lawyer pool, and there are four types of lawyers, listed below by probability of being wealthy: Honest and competent Dishonest and competent Dishonest and… Read more
Things don’t look so good for Harrisburg PA. Here’s what CNN has to say: The capital city Pennsylvania is broke and will be skipping this month’s multi-million dollar bond payment.On Sept. 15, Harrisburg, Pa., was scheduled to make a $3.29 million payment on the bonds it issued to build a trash plant. But, the cash-strapped… Read more
Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times had an article on the decline of illegal immigration into the United States. It is unpopular to say this, but this is bad. There is lots of evidence that immigrants, including illegal immigrants, are a net positive to the economy. Here is a recent and typical research piece from the… Read more
