The Fed’s national wealth report for the second quarter is out today. For a New-Classical Macroeconomist, this is one of the most important data releases. Wealth is one of the most important theoretical drivers of consumption, and it is one of the drivers in our forecast model of the United States economy. National wealth, i.e.… Read more

Last night we had a faculty meeting.  One of the issues that came up was parking congestion.  The University is growing, and this year there have been some problems finding parking spots. More parking was suggested, but the number of parking spaces isn’t the problem.  The problem is that the University gives parking permits for… Read more

Here‘s Bloomberg’s report on today’s data release.  One paragraph has caused the Drudge Report to run the headline “GOV’T MAKES IT UP: JOB NUMBERS ‘ESTIMATED’ FOR WEEK…” (Caps by Drudge).  Here’s the paragraph: For the latest reporting week, nine states didn’t file claims data to the Labor Department in Washington because of the federal holiday… Read more

California Watch has a piece on the chief justice of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.  Seems he wants poor judges.  I have a problem with that.  Judges come from the lawyer pool, and there are four types of lawyers, listed below by probability of being wealthy: Honest and competent Dishonest and competent Dishonest and… Read more

The August employment report is out this morning. The United States unemployment rate rose slightly from 9.5 to 9.6 percent, driven more by labor force gains than employment losses. The non-farm job losses occurred in the public sector, the largest component of which was likely related to the Census wind-down. The bulk of the Census… Read more

The FDIC’s quarterly banking profile, providing data for quarter 2, was released today. The number of 2010 United States bank failures will likely exceed the 2009 failures, the FDIC reported. This was as I reported in this space back in May. Thus far this year there have been 118 bank closings, which compares to about… Read more

The Bureau of Economic Analysis released their second estimate of United States 2010 second quarter Gross Domestic Product today. The revised estimate of 1.6 percent real GDP growth is much lower than the initial estimate of 2.4 percent, but some commentators spoke of this release in favorable terms, as it was higher than pre-release estimates… Read more

The July California jobs report shows continued weakness for the Golden State’s labor markets. Annualized month-on-month job growth declined 0.8 percent. Year-on-year job growth also declined 0.8 percent, and the unemployment rate held at 12.3 percent. The unemployment rate remains almost 300 basis points higher than the United States unemployment rate. To some extent, as… 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

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