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
Previously published in the California Economic Forecast, March 24, 2011 If you are looking for a summary statistic on the United States economy, I recommend you consider bank charge-offs. These are the loans that banks have written off their books, because the probability of collecting them is so low. It doesn’t mean that the borrowers… Read more
Last year about this time there was all sorts of talk about green shoots and economic recovery. We were vocal in cautioning that the shoots were ephemeral and would evaporate with the end of incentive programs and census hiring. We were right, as job growth turned negative in the 2010’s second quarter. Now, there is… Read more
Paul Krugman really doesn’t like the possibility that there is a structural shift in employment, because it weakens the argument for the massive Keynesian spending spree he’d like to see the government initiate. To that end, he published this piece on his blog February 13th. Before we go on, some readers may wonder what a… Read more
A lot of state governments are in trouble, afflicted as they are with high expenses and weak revenues. They need to be thinking clearly if they are to have any hope of solving their problems. Unfortunately, lots of fuzzy thinking occurs when it comes to taxes. The biggest problem is that many people think that… Read more
People who know me know that I’m a big supporter of increased immigration. A surge of new educated immigrants would create an economic boom, solve our housing issues, and reinvigorate our cities. Actually, I’d go one better than that. I’d let anyone in who wanted to come, and I’d have them sign a large note,… Read more
Daryl G. Jones has a piece in Fortune titled Why the housing bulls are wrong. He’s correct about the housing bulls being wrong, but his reasons aren’t all that convincing to me. Here’s the reason housing won’t see a robust recovery for a couple of years: The home ownership rate (percentage of people who own… Read more
Let’s see: The President wants to double exports in five years.* The Treasury is the appropriate department to create and implement a plan to double exports. Tim Geithner runs the Treasury. Tim Geithner denies deliberately weakening the dollar. See why I’m having cognitive dissonance here? How can you possibly double exports without lowering the cost… Read more
People are getting excited because China’s economy is expected to soon exceed the United States economy in size. They seem to think this is bad. Here’s an example. This is really a stupid thing to worry about, perhaps even a really stupid thing to worry about. China has a population of 1.34 billion, almost 20… Read more
Dan, my favorite workaholic, sent the following from China and asked that I post it: Dan Hamilton October 28, 2010 The first estimate of United States third quarter Gross Domestic Product came out today. The preliminary estimate of third quarter real GDP growth was 2.0 percent, which follows a 1.7 percent growth rate during the… Read more
I’ll be giving a talk at the Valley Industry and Commerce Association (VICA) Business Forecast Conference on October 28 at the Warner Center Marriott in Woodland Hills California. James Paulsen of Wells Capital Management and William Roberts of my undergraduate Alma Mater, California State University Northridge, will also be there. The three of us were… Read more
