Latest Articles

April Employment Situation & Forecast Update

Written by Dan Hamilton & Matthew Fienup The BLS April Employment Situation is now available for all to see.  After economic forecast houses across the globe ran their models beginning in mid-March and re-ran them […]

CERF's Coronavirus Forecast: April 10, 2020

The Coronavirus Recession The Coronavirus is now understood to be having a stunning impact on the U.S. economy. The suspension of economic activity resulting from social distancing and shelter-in-place orders issued across the nation is […]

The (so-called) Stimulus

Considering both the actual stimulus packages passed by Congress and the potential fiscal and monetary responses, we conclude that the U.S. government can do little to reduce the severity and length of the Coronavirus Recession […]

Stock Prices During Pandemic

As market-watchers, we are suffering from a serious case of whiplash. The week of March 9 saw five consecutive trading sessions in which the S&P 500 moved at least 4.9 percent between the opening and […]

CERF’s Coronavirus Update: March 23, 2020

Written by Matthew Fienup & Dan Hamilton We do not envy decision makers in local, state, and federal government. They have exceedingly difficult decisions to make, under extreme pressure, with human lives literally hanging in […]

CERF's Coronavirus Update: March 20, 2020

Written by Matthew Fienup & Dan Hamilton The Coronavirus is now understood as having a stunning impact on the U.S. economy. The suspension of economic activity is simply breathtaking. It appears safe to say we […]

CERF's Coronavirus Update: March 13, 2020

Written by Matthew Fienup & Dan Hamilton Although we will be releasing a full U.S. economic forecast publication in just two weeks, the CERF team wants to take a few moments to share some thoughts […]

The January Jobs Report

The BLS’s U.S. January jobs report was released this morning and it includes not only the latest monthly jobs numbers, but also benchmark revisions. We regard this jobs report as a fairly positive one, but […]

Ventura County GDP Revision

Matthew Fienup & Dan Hamilton (Original post 12/13/19, edits 12/15/19) The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released its annual Metro GDP dataset yesterday which provides economic growth figures for our regional economy.  The release […]

Fienup: Stock Prices and the Broader Economy

Indexing

An index fund is a portfolio that aims to mimic as possible a designated index, generally a broad-based stock or bond index.  For example, some of the most popular index funds target the Standard and […]

Latino GDP Report Summary

This is from our First Annual LDC U.S. Latino GDP Report which was published on Thursday, September 26th, at the L’Attitude Conference in San Diego: Executive Summary This report seeks to provide a factual view […]