Don’t do it. The result will be permanently lower economic growth, less upward economic mobility and greater inequality. For generations. The most urgent economic recovery strategy is one that pays down the extraordinary debt accumulated during the last year. As we stated here, many of the $1.9 trillion bill’s provisions “will be borne on the… Read more

A typical piece of financial advice is to reduce your equity allocation as you age.  When you are young, there is plenty of time to recover from a market debacle.  Not so much if the debacle occurs after you are already retired.  One rule of thumb is that your equity allocation should be 100 minus… Read more

The latest Ventura County GDP data was released Wednesday morning by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. This release consists of GDP data for every county and metropolitan area in the U.S. It includes revisions to previously released estimates from 2001 to 2018, and it provides the BEA’s preliminary estimates of 2019 county GDP. Revised… Read more

Ezekial Emanuel is an oncologist and professor of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania.  He was also one of the principal architects of the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) and has recently been appointed to Joe Biden’s COVID Task Force.  A few years ago he penned an article for the Atlantic Magazine entitled “Why I… Read more

This essay was written October 26, and published in the Ventura County Economic Forecast Publication that was released on November 5. The U.S. experienced a historic contraction in March, a recession that will mark the history books with its severity and sudden-ness. The $2.2 trillion contraction from the fourth quarter of 2019 to the second… Read more

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The 2020 LDC U.S. Latino GDP Report seeks to provide a factual view of the large and rapidly growing economic contribution of Latinos living in the United States. We estimate the U.S. Latino GDP based on a detailed, bottom-up construction which leverages publicly available data from major U.S. agencies. The most recent year… Read more

Democratic candidates for President in 2020 have put forth numerous innovative policy proposals.  One of these is a tax on wealth (the Wealth Tax).  Bernie Sanders’s plan called for a 2% annual tax on net worth between $50 million and $1 billion, 4% on net worth between $1 billion and $10 billion, and 8% on… Read more

  Fiscal Dominance    noun a situation in which the fiscal authority is so profligate that a conscientious monetary authority is forced to accommodate – that is, the monetary authority must print money in order to maintain government solvency.   Stockholm Syndrome    noun feelings of trust or affection felt in many cases of kidnapping or hostage-taking… Read more

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 simply breathtaking. One of the earliest data points to arrive was new jobless claims. Nearly 17 million people have filed… Read more

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 but can do much to prolong it. Monetary policy was already on a crisis footing. Policy makers failed to unwind extraordinary… Read more