Previously published in the Orange County Register Over the past few months I’ve been privileged to hear two members of California’s Black Caucus speak, and I’ve been mightily impressed. Last fall, Sen. Roderick Wright (D-Inglewood) […]
Read moreGordon Pye was a finance professor at UC Berkeley in the 1970s. Then he became Chief Economist at a bank in New York City. After ten years or so, the bank was acquired by another […]
Read moreU.S. economic growth accelerated from 0.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012 to 2.5 percent in the first quarter of 2013. This acceleration was driven mainly by increases in consumption growth and inventory investment. […]
Read morePreviously published in the Orange County Register Sarah Conly is a Bowdoin College philosophy professor who has recently gained some fame/notoriety/attention with a New York Times piece Three Cheers for the Nanny State (which argues […]
Read morePreviously published in The City Journal The New York Times loves California. Well, parts of it, anyway. Adam Nagourney, writing a few weeks after voters approved a temporary income- and sales-tax hike, reported that the […]
Read moreAt first glance, this seems like a dumb question. The Freddie Mac 30 year mortgage rate is approximately 3.75%, near its all-time low. Based on this rate, the median income family can afford to purchase […]
Read morePreviously published in the Orange County Register I encountered the phrase “A well-ordered anarchist society” in Michael Huemer’s book The Problem of Political Authority. The phrase grabbed my imagination, and it hasn’t really let it […]
Read moreThe California Economic Summit published a piece reacting to what President Obama’s push to raise the minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $9 an hour would mean for California. There were a number of […]
Read moreThe year 1972 was a big one for me. I left the US Air Force, and I married the woman I still love. Once it dawned on me that I needed income to support my […]
Read moreJournalist Helaine Olen has produced a strong criticism of the personal finance industry1. She claims the industry does not add much value, makes unsubstantiated claims, charges huge fees, is fraught with conflicts of interest, and […]
Read moreIn the fiscal year beginning October 2008 (the 2009 fiscal year), federal government spending exploded from 20.8 percent of GDP to 25.2 percent of GDP. This was due to a confluence of factors including a […]
Read moreAt the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Goldman Sachs Chief Operating Officer (COO) Gary Cohn suggested that many investors and banks might not be prepared for what he called a “significant repricing” in bond […]
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