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
I just finished California Crack Up by Joe Matthews and Mark Paul. For me, the book was not quite fulfilling, and it took determination to read the final 30 pages or so. There was some inconsistency. The authors argue that Proposition 13 led to a concentration of power in Sacramento, but only a few pages… Read more
Last winter I gave a forecast to the agents of a commercial real estate company. The forecast was necessarily negative, but it was well received by the agents. The company’s president was another matter. He was downright angry. I wasn’t optimistic enough. A very similar vignette played itself out when I gave a forecast to… Read more
It’s not everyday that Greg Mankiw and Paul Krugman agree. When they do, it’s worth thinking about. Here are their blog posts: Krugman & Mankiw. The topic is a Taylor Rule, which is a method, proposed John Taylor, for determining what Fed Policy should be. That is, what is the interest rate that the Fed… Read more
Every morning I have this little battle with myself. Will I listen to music, news, or business news? I know I should do one of the latter two, but I really like music. Mostly, I’m weak. I listen to music. Today though, I listened to the business news, and now I’m sorry I did. Some… Read more
Well, this is interesting. It seems that the Securities and Exchange Commission has filed suit against New Jersey for securities fraud in marketing its debt. Their problem was that they neglected to report some pension liabilities. I doubt that California has made that mistake, but State Treasurer, Bill Lockyer, has been very aggressive in attempting… Read more
I was at a meeting this morning with with people from across the economy. We had a farmer, an accountant, a banker, two city economic development people, a university dean, and more. While the meeting had another purpose, we ended it by going around the room and having people tell us how things were going… Read more
Finally, people are starting to see the problem with the United States economy. This piece is typical. For over a year now, we have been warning that the United States could be facing a long period of slow economic growth, similar to what Japan has seen for the past couple of decades. Seeing a problem… Read more
Joel Kotkin has just published the best piece yet written on California and its diminished economic prospects. Better yet, he used our data to support his work. It is a relatively long article, but well worth the investment. Indeed, it should be required reading for voters and policy makers everywhere. As always, Joel has his… Read more
We are just wrapping up our first year of the CLU MS Econ program. In fact, my students are taking their final as I write this. On a personal level, it’s been very rewarding. When we started the program, some people outside of CLU claimed we couldn’t get the program up, running, and accredited in… Read more
Bloomberg has a report on an IMF study. Here is the key sentence: “The U.S. financial system remains fragile and banks subjected to additional economic stress might need as much as $76 billion in capital, according to the results of International Monetary Fund stress tests.” We at CERF have been long concerned about the strength… Read more
