Previously published on February 13, 2016 on Newgeography.com It is an article of faith among California’s political class that insufficient higher educational opportunities are a constraint on California’s economic and job growth. Just about every […]
Read moreBased on the book of the same name by Michael Lewis, the Big Short is a movie about several hedge fund managers who identified cracks in the mortgage market in 2005-2007 and attempted to bet […]
Read moreWritten by Bill Watkins Previously published January 19, 2016 at newgeography.com. Every now and then, something happens to cause California’s comfortable establishment to celebrate the state’s economy. Recent budget surpluses and jobs data have provided […]
Read moreWhat is the right amount of debt for a particular borrower? This depends on the borrower. Are we talking about a corporation, a bank, a household, a government entity, or an investment fund? At a […]
Read moreAt the ASSA economics conference on Sunday, I attended a session on the equilibrium real (inflation adjusted) interest rate. This topic was being discussed in particular as a metric relating to sluggish U.S. economic growth […]
Read moreHouston, we have liftoff! That is not what Fed chair Janet Yellen said, but we can say that the Dow closed up 224 points at the end of trading today. The Fed had telegraphed this […]
Read moreAsset management is an extremely competitive industry that offers extraordinary wealth building opportunities to those managers who are successful in generating market beating returns, or at least in bringing in large amounts of assets to […]
Read moreWe have shown in prior blogs how do-it-yourself investors can achieve reasonable investment returns through the use of low-cost highly diversified passively managed funds. How can non-do-it-yourselfers obtain these same benefits? There are financial advisors […]
Read morePreviously published on October 29, 2015 on Newgeography.com California has a long history of boom and bust cycles, but over the past 25 years or so, California’s cycles appear to be becoming more volatile, […]
Read moreJohn Cochrane is professor of finance at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago and is an expert on the theory of asset pricing. You can take (or audit) his free online […]
Read moreIn late 2008, U.S. banks accelerated consolidation driven by intense Federal government pressure (many failing banks were “saved” by being acquired by a larger bank). This yielded a banking structure where today the largest five […]
Read morePreviously published on September 2, 2015 on Fox and Hounds As California weathers its fourth straight year of extreme drought, policy makers and their cheerleaders continue to scapegoat California’s agricultural industry. Writing in the Sacramento […]
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