CERF Blog

In a widely read NYT editorial, famous investor Warren Buffett has proposed tax increases for the rich, like himself.  Although one of the richest men in the world, Mr. Buffett claims that he pays a lower tax rate than the secretaries in his office.  That seems really strange.  The data put forth by Warren are… Read more

A bank’s capital ratio is a ratio in which the numerator is a measure of capital (like common equity) and the denominator is a measure of assets (usually risk-weighted assets). Bank executives sometimes take the reciprocal of this ratio and call it “leverage.” More commonly, leverage is defined to be the ratio of debt to… Read more

In a newsletter about three months ago, I acknowledged some improving economic conditions in Oregon, but counseled that it was no time to become complacent. That turns out to have been right on. Since then, seasonally adjusted job growth has dramatically slowed, and seasonally adjusted unemployment has increased. When Oregon had some good job numbers,… Read more

Today’s jobs data release was below our forecast, and that is bad. It is even worse, when one considers the productivity data released earlier in the week. That report showed that productivity has fallen in each of the past three consecutive quarters. This is the most sustained decline since 1979. Productivity used to have a… Read more

The power of faith is always impressive, and few demonstrate more faith than those who truly believe that California’s economy will always recover boundless economic prosperity regardless of policy. The true believers’ faith persists in spite of years of contrary evidence. California’s share of national jobs peaked in 1990. Domestic migration has been negative for… Read more

We’ve seen more and more forecasters and analysts revising their forecast down. In fact, after being among the lowest for years, we’re now almost consensus. Remember, they came to us. Downward revisions to United States gross domestic product (GDP) have driven most of the revisions. For about two years, we had trouble with the original… Read more

Jeff Speakes Volatility in financial markets has jumped sharply in recent weeks, thanks to the U.S. debt ceiling debate and ongoing financial crisis in Europe. For most investors this has been a period of great consternation. But for some “Black Swan” investors, it has been a period of extraordinarily positive return. A Bloomberg article1 notes… Read more

Jeffrey Speakes Downgrade On Friday, August 5 after the market close, Standard and Poor’s (S&P) announced a downgrade of U.S. Treasury debt from AAA to AA+. This announcement followed Congressional approval of a debt limit increase and ten year plan to cut projected deficit relative to baseline by $2.1 trillion. Evidently, the debt deal was… Read more

Michael Puente and Dan Hamilton The BLS’s July Employment Situation was released today. Non-farm jobs grew by 117,000, highly focused on healthcare, (31,000), retail, (26,000), manufacturing, (24,000), and mining (9,000). Despite the increase in jobs, the measured employment level, an alternate measure of workers, decreased. That decrease was met by a larger decrease to the… Read more

Continuing my commentary on last Friday’s GDP release, here is a chart showing the revisions to real GDP growth. It might seem like some quarters are up and some are down, in effect a wash. Despite that appearance, on net, the new measure implies that growth was slower during the 2007 through 2011 quarter 1… Read more

As we and other analysts have already mentioned, the GDP report released Friday indicates that growth was slower than we thought and inflation was higher than we thought during the 2007 to 2010 period. 2011 quarter 2 economic growth was 1.3 percent. Some details include: • Consumption growth was essentially zero • The BEA savings… Read more

The United States GDP data release this morning was dismal. The overall conclusions from this report are that: • Economic growth was weaker than we thought during 2007 to 2010 • Inflation was higher than we thought during 2007 to 2010 • Consumption spending was weaker than we thought during 2007 to 2010 • Output… Read more

Until today, we’ve been confident that we could avoid a double-dip recession.  Too be sure, we’ve acknowledged that risks abound, particularly in the Middle East and in the Eurozone.  However, the recovery seemed to be proceeding about as we had expected, slowly, certainly slower than most forecasts. We believed that the United States economy, absent… Read more

The BLS’s Employment Situation report for June was released today. Non-farm jobs and the unemployment rate both grew slightly. Jobs grew by 18,000, which on a base of 131 million jobs, is essentially the same as our forecast of 21,000. The unemployment rate was 9.2 percent, essentially the same as our forecast of 9.15 percent.… Read more

It was big news when bank charge offs exceeded $40 billion in 2008’s fourth quarter.  It was the first time in history that wrote off more than $40 billion in uncollectable loans.  Since then, you’ve probably heard nothing about bank charge offs, unless you follow CERF. We think bank charge off data are important, because… Read more