Latest Articles

Regional California Unemployment Rates

The October California jobs report was released November 20. The statewide unemployment rate increased from 12.3 in September to 12.5 percent in October. We are encouraged by the slight uptick in payroll job counts in […]

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It is Not a Conspiracy

I had to pause when I read George Melloan’s Wall Street Journal piece today. Seems he sees a conspiracy between Treasury and the Federal Reserve to fund the national deficit with bank funds to the […]

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The Second Estimate of 3rd Quarter GDP

The BEA’s second estimate of total United States Economic activity, just out today, is 2.8 percent. This is down 70 basis points from the “advance” estimate published a month ago. The change in the estimate […]

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The Chip Report

The Gartner Group released a new outlook report for the global semiconductor industry yesterday, November 16th. There is a bit of optimism in this report! The group has raised their forecast for 2009 based on […]

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The Rail Report

The Association of American Railroads released its Rail Time Indicators report last Wednesday. October United States rail carloads were down 15.3 percent from October 2008 while intermodal traffic was down 11.2 percent. For the first […]

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Deflation is Always Bad

After the kids went to bed last night, I checked the web to see if there was anything new. The Wall Street Journal posts the next day’s op-eds the evening before print publication. So, I […]

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The Global Bond Market & Deflation

Japan stepped up their purchases of United States Treasuries during October to $105 billion dollars, boosting their total holdings of United States Treasury Issues to $731 billion, more than 10 percent of the total market. […]

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The October Employment Situation

The United States unemployment rate rose from 9.8 percent in September to 10.2 percent in October, exceeding our forecast and the consensus forecast. We appear to be in-between everyone else and reality again. The data, […]

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It is Probably Not Irrational to Pay for an Under-Water Home

The Mysterious Effective Demand tweeted and blogged on a paper by University of Arizona Professor Brent T. White. I haven’t read the full paper, but the portion quoted by Effective Demand presents a pretty simple […]

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The Carry Trade

Carry trade is the name of the strategy of going short in a low-interest rate currency such as the Japanese Yen or the U.S. dollar while going long in a high-interest rate currency such as […]

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Thinking About Quarter 4

Recent United States economic indicators have provided mixed signals. Measures of GDP, industrial production, factory orders, and trade have been encouraging while homeownership rates, foreclosure rates, and bank charge-offs still remain discouragingly high. A manufacturing […]

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