CERF Blog

I was at a meeting this morning with with people from across the economy.  We had a farmer, an accountant, a banker, two city economic development people, a university dean, and more.  While the meeting had another purpose, we ended it by going around the room and having people tell us how things were going… Read more

Finally, people are starting to see the problem with the United States economy.  This piece is typical.  For over a year now, we have been warning that the United States could be facing a long period of slow economic growth, similar to what Japan has seen for the past couple of decades. Seeing a problem… Read more

the data gave no reason for a giddy attack

Today’s decline in market values, and particularly in the financial sector, has to reflect more than new employment data.  I’m thinking that market participants are coming to see that the risk of at least one  sovereign debt default is higher than previously thought.  A realistic assessment of the risks and potential impacts on the Euro,… Read more

Tonight I’ll be speaking to a group working on saving the Ventura River. The river once had a very large steelhead run, and I’m told a salmon run. Today, it is home to the homeless. I would love to see the river restored to a more pristine state, and I would love to have steelhead… Read more

The question has merit, but I came to it by a roundabout process. I was thinking about how our savings rate is low and falling. After all, we have lots of reasons to save: We’ve lost huge amounts of wealth over the past couple of years, and many people, especially Baby Boomers anticipating retirement, are… Read more

When thinking about regulation, it is helpful to have some regulatory principles. Here are my proposals: Keep it simple. Simple regulation is cost-effective regulation. Simple regulation minimizes both regulatory costs to the government and compliance costs to the regulated firms, costs eventually borne by consumers or taxpayers. Complicated regulation invites lawsuits and encourages efforts to… Read more

This is a question that I’ve never seen asked, at least not in the popular press, but it seems important to me, and I’ve been thinking a lot about it lately. For one thing, how can you possibly write good regulation if you don’t know what you are trying to do? It could be that… Read more

Today’s data releases highlight the challenges facing those who claim we are in a recovery. The December retail sales volume, down 0.3 percent from November, was perhaps the most shocking number to the optimists out there. This was almost a full percentage point below “consensus expectations,” which were for 0.5 percent growth. So much for… Read more

I ran across this Robert Scheer piece in The Nation. Sheer laments the fact that the Obama administration seems determined to not bring back the Glass-Steagall Act, while McCain is trying to reinstate the regulation. Apparently, Larry Summers supported the repeal of the Glass-Steagall when he was with the Clinton administration. Scheer believes that Summers… Read more