CERF Blog
Forbes recently ran an article by William Baldwin titled “Do You Live in a Death Spiral State?” In the article, Baldwin calls states with declining economies Death Spiral States. (Confession: I really wish I’d come up that term) He correctly included California among his Death Spiral States. Then, he gives investment advice based only on… Read more
Previously published March 22, 2011 It appears that California residential real estate is in the second dip of a double-dip decline. California home prices, and sales, crashed at the beginning of the recession. Then, last year they picked up in the first half of the year, a result of temporary government programs and optimism unsupported… Read more
Previously Published March 17, 2011, in the California Economic Forecast A couple of weeks ago, somebody–I think it was Shiller–said that they expected residential real estate price to decline by another 20 percent or more. Soon after, I was contacted and asked if I thought that a 20 percent decline was possible. My answer was… Read more
The United States employment situation improved substantially in November. The unemployment rate fell a bit and quarter-on-quarter job losses slowed dramatically, almost to zero. This welcome news has been greeted with rises in equities and a fall in Treasury bonds. I have attached four charts below. Are we out of the woods? No. Is this… Read more
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 and predictable argument that “Millions of American homeowners are “underwater” on their mortgages – owing more than the value of… Read more
Reuters has a release of new housing data. Seems sales fell in September and Augusts’ numbers were revised down. I’m amazed at the writer’s confidence that we are in “widening recovery.” The money quotes are “The housing data represented a road bump in a recovery that otherwise appears to be widening.” & “With some lingering… Read more
