CERF Blog

Last winter I gave a forecast to the agents of a commercial real estate company.  The forecast was necessarily negative, but it was well received by the agents.  The company’s president was another matter.  He was downright angry.  I wasn’t optimistic enough.  A very similar vignette played itself out when I gave a forecast to… Read more

It’s not everyday that Greg Mankiw and Paul Krugman agree.  When they do, it’s worth thinking about.  Here are their blog posts: Krugman & Mankiw. The topic is a Taylor Rule, which is a method, proposed John Taylor, for determining what Fed Policy should be.  That is, what is the interest rate that the Fed… Read more

Every morning I have this little battle with myself.  Will I listen to music, news, or business news?  I know I should do one of the latter two, but I really like music.  Mostly, I’m weak.  I listen to music.  Today though, I listened to the business news, and now I’m sorry I did. Some… Read more

The Center for Responsible Lending has published a report “Dreams Deferred: Impacts and Characteristics of the California Foreclosure Crises”. I focus my comments on two of the points made in their report. According to their data and analysis, houses purchased in California from October 2006 to November 2009 were relatively small homes, median size of… Read more

Well, this is interesting.  It seems that the Securities and Exchange Commission has filed suit against New Jersey for securities fraud in marketing its debt.  Their problem was that they neglected to report some pension liabilities. I doubt that California has made that mistake, but State Treasurer, Bill Lockyer, has been very aggressive in attempting… Read more

I was at a meeting this morning with with people from across the economy.  We had a farmer, an accountant, a banker, two city economic development people, a university dean, and more.  While the meeting had another purpose, we ended it by going around the room and having people tell us how things were going… Read more

Finally, people are starting to see the problem with the United States economy.  This piece is typical.  For over a year now, we have been warning that the United States could be facing a long period of slow economic growth, similar to what Japan has seen for the past couple of decades. Seeing a problem… Read more

Joel Kotkin has just published the best piece yet written on California and its diminished economic prospects.  Better yet, he used our data to support his work.  It is a relatively long article, but well worth the investment.  Indeed, it should be required reading for voters and policy makers everywhere.  As always, Joel has his… Read more

The United States unemployment rate held steady at 9.5 percent, a result of losses in both jobs and the labor force. The job losses occurred in the public sector, the largest component of which was the Census wind-down. While the long-term unemployed slipped a bit from 6.8 million to 6.6 million, 6.6 million remains a… Read more

We are just wrapping up our first year of the CLU MS Econ program.  In fact, my students are taking their final as I write this. On a personal level, it’s been very rewarding.  When we started the program, some people outside of CLU claimed we couldn’t get the program up, running, and accredited in… Read more

The Bureau of Economic Analysis released its first estimate of the United States 2010 second quarter Gross Domestic product growth rate today. Their estimated 2.4 percent growth rate was below most economists’ expectations, ours included. They estimate that consumption expenditures grew very mildly at 1.6 percent, investment expenditures grew massively at 29 percent, government expenditures… Read more

Bloomberg has a report on an IMF study.  Here is the key sentence: “The U.S. financial system remains fragile and banks subjected to additional economic stress might need as much as $76 billion in capital, according to the results of International Monetary Fund stress tests.” We at CERF have been long concerned about the strength… Read more

I just read paper The Macroeconomic Effects of Tax Changes: Estimates Based on a New Measure of Fiscal Shocks by Christina Romer and David Romer. It’s in the June 2010 issue of The American Economic Review (AER), the industry’s top peer-reviewed journal. Being in the AER is a guarantee that the paper is rigorous and… Read more

I discussed three stylized possible equilibria for the United States economy in a July 18 blog. The best equilibrium, one with rapid job and GDP growth and low inflation was relegated to an unlikely possibility at this time. The worst equilibrium of the three, the “bad-deflation” scenario, was one where debt-laden and cash-strapped consumers hold… Read more

Bloomberg has the following headline and article: “Home Vacancies Rise as U.S. Ownership Falls to Lowest in Decade.” Most will take this as bad news, and it is, but not for the reasons many will think.  Most will lament the decline in home ownership, as if it is somehow a slide away from the American… Read more