Written by Matthew Fienup & Dan Hamilton Although we will be releasing a full U.S. economic forecast publication in just two weeks, the CERF team wants to take a few moments to share some thoughts and observations.  We provide this to the community and our clients so they are abreast of CERF’s thoughts on recent… Read more

Matthew Fienup & Dan Hamilton (Original post 12/13/19, edits 12/15/19) The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released its annual Metro GDP dataset yesterday which provides economic growth figures for our regional economy.  The release includes a new Ventura County GDP growth estimate for 2018 as well as significant, and truly surprising, revisions to the… Read more

This is from our First Annual LDC U.S. Latino GDP Report which was published on Thursday, September 26th, at the L’Attitude Conference in San Diego: Executive Summary This report seeks to provide a factual view of the large and growing economic contribution of Latinos living in the United States. In order to do this, we… Read more

The January 4 Federal Reserve Chairs Joint Interview panel at the largest and most prestigious economics conference in the country was a standing room only affair with a massive media presence.  I got there fifteen minutes early and almost did not get a seat.  New York Times senior economics correspondent Neil Irwin provided an early… Read more

Previously published on December 16, 2016 in the California Economic Forecast publication. United States housing sales have been climbing since the recession, but are still relatively low. This is particularly true once the home sales are adjusted for population. Household formation has shown some signs of life lately, especially since early 2015. New home starts… Read more

Previously published on Friday, June 10th, 2016 on pacbiztimes.com By Dan E. Hamilton Since 2008, the Federal Reserve has been engaged in an unprecedented experiment, one without any economic theory to recommend it. Its policies are internally inconsistent. Some work to restrict credit. Others ease credit. The 2007 failure of New Century Financial, a leading… Read more

Written by Bill Watkins Previously published January 19, 2016 at newgeography.com. Every now and then, something happens to cause California’s comfortable establishment to celebrate the state’s economy.  Recent budget surpluses and jobs data have provided several opportunities, never mind that these are hardly summary statistics.  They don’t tell the complete story. The celebrants conveniently ignore… Read more

At the ASSA economics conference on Sunday, I attended a session on the equilibrium real (inflation adjusted) interest rate.  This topic was being discussed in particular as a metric relating to sluggish U.S. economic growth since the Great Recession. First, some presenters documented empirically that real interest rates since 1860 has had episodes, some of… Read more

Houston, we have liftoff!  That is not what Fed chair Janet Yellen said, but we can say that the Dow closed up 224 points at the end of trading today.  The Fed had telegraphed this move, markets had priced it in, and this market reaction is consistent. I am pleased with this move, as I… Read more

In late 2008, U.S. banks accelerated consolidation driven by intense Federal government pressure (many failing banks were “saved” by being acquired by a larger bank). This yielded a banking structure where today the largest five U.S. banks control over 44 percent of the nation’s banking assets. The five largest U.S. banks held assets of $6.7… Read more