We released our new United States and California forecasts today. As we note in our publication, available online HERE, we are pessimistic relative to consensus, particularly for 2010 quarters 2, 3, and 4. It appears that we see the negatives continuing longer than our forecasting colleagues at UCLA and across the nation. These negatives include… Read more

Some countries do not follow Milton Friedman’s freely floating exchange rate advice (see my recent blog). Instead, they peg their currency to the U.S. dollar. Sometimes they have logical reasons for doing so.  Usually, this is because their financial markets and banking systems are not yet developed enough to allow the hedging needed by enterprises… Read more

It has been 57 years since Milton Friedman wrote his paper “The Case for Flexible Exchange Rates” where he argued that the benefits from a market economy and a free trade system would be enhanced by flexible exchange rates. This implied a freely floating dollar, whose value was to be determined by the buying and… Read more

The February United States jobs report sent the equity markets up this morning while respected commentators like Edmund Phelps, (Columbia, Economics Nobel in 2006), remark that they worry that the “recovery” might not have legs. It always a bit odd to discuss growth that is less negative but that is the situation we are in… Read more