Forbes recently ran an article by William Baldwin titled “Do You Live in a Death Spiral State?” In the article, Baldwin calls states with declining economies Death Spiral States. (Confession: I really wish I’d come up that term) He correctly included California among his Death Spiral States. Then, he gives investment advice based only on… 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

Previously published March 22, 2011 It appears that California residential real estate is in the second dip of a double-dip decline. California home prices, and sales, crashed at the beginning of the recession. Then, last year they picked up in the first half of the year, a result of temporary government programs and optimism unsupported… Read more

Previously published in the California Economic Forecast, March 24, 2011 If you are looking for a summary statistic on the United States economy, I recommend you consider bank charge-offs. These are the loans that banks have written off their books, because the probability of collecting them is so low. It doesn’t mean that the borrowers… 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

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