CERF Blog

The 2009 state-by-state real GDP growth rate estimates were released by the BEA this morning. Given that 2009 was a pivotal year in the Great Recession, we saw lots of variability. There were 38 state economies that experienced contractions, most led by the construction and durables goods manufacturing sectors. The average across all 50 states… Read more

The BLS provided the October Consumer Price Index release today.  The October core CPI year-on-year growth was 0.6 percent.  This is the lowest growth of this measure since 1957.  This rate of growth is low enough that the Fed is concerned that price growth is too low.  In an economy characterized by weak demand, weak… Read more

Despite positive United States economic growth since the third quarter of 2009, job growth continues to be weak, indeed negative until recently. Separately, I have argued that the Fed should be patient and wait for households to rebuild their balance sheets, a process that will take quite some time to complete, and probably can’t be… 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

United States non-farm jobs fell by 95,000 jobs in September driven by a 159,000 loss of government jobs that was offset by a 64,000 gain in private sector payroll jobs. The government job losses resulted from Census cutbacks and continued local government sector declines. Non-farm job growth has been negative for four months now, i.e.… Read more

Molly Clancy & Dan Hamilton In July we discussed the topic of Multiple-Equilibria in the United States economy. This blog is an update to that post, which can be found here. We argued there that the United States is currently in a “good-deflation” equilibrium, where consumers and producers find low price growth as helpful in… Read more

The Los Angeles Times has an article today with the scare headline “$69 million in California welfare money drawn out of state.” This is the most recent of several of these types of articles, not necessarily in the Times, the purpose of which seems to be publicizing the claim that welfare recipiensts are wasting the… Read more

Modern economic theory has come to think of important macro-economic events as caused by shocks. The types of shocks are usually organized into four broad categories: supply shocks, demand shocks, policy shocks, and bubbles/debt shocks. United States examples of very large shocks include the recession of 1974, (a supply shock), the Great Depression, the 1981… Read more

We have some economic news out today.  453,000 filed initial unemployment claims, and the second quarter GDP estimate is 1.7 percent growth.  The news people are practically ecstatic over this, proclaiming it’s good news.  The markets seem to agree.  Each of the stock markets are up right now. True enough, the unemployment claims are down… Read more

I get the following question, or something like it all the time.  This time it came by e-mail.  I thought I’d post my response.  Here’s the question: When looking at the economy, unemployment, and job growth…..what consideration is given to the impact of the decline of jobs and/or elimination of jobs in the public sector… Read more

California has pending legislation, AB 2529, to require an economic impact analysis of proposed new regulation. Its opponents correctly point out that AB 2529 will delay and increase the cost of new regulation. There will be lawsuits and arguments over the proper methodology and over assumptions. It is not easy to complete a thorough and… Read more

California’s unemployment rate edged up from 12.3 in July to 12.4 percent in August, the Employment Development Department reported today. This was driven more by changes in jobs, (losses), rather than changes in labor force. California’s unemployment rate is third highest in the nation behind Michigan and Nevada. California’s month-on-month non-farm job growth rate worsened… Read more