The power of faith is always impressive, and few demonstrate more faith than those who truly believe that California’s economy will always recover boundless economic prosperity regardless of policy. The true believers’ faith persists in spite of years of contrary evidence. California’s share of national jobs peaked in 1990. Domestic migration has been negative . . . → Read More: California, Faith, and Economic Growth

We’ve seen more and more forecasters and analysts revising their forecast down. In fact, after being among the lowest for years, we’re now almost consensus. Remember, they came to us.

Downward revisions to United States gross domestic product (GDP) have driven most of the revisions. For about two years, we had trouble with the . . . → Read More: Thoughts on the U.S. Economy

Jeff Speakes

Volatility in financial markets has jumped sharply in recent weeks, thanks to the U.S. debt ceiling debate and ongoing financial crisis in Europe. For most investors this has been a period of great consternation. But for some “Black Swan” investors, it has been a period of extraordinarily positive return. A Bloomberg article1 . . . → Read More: Black Swan Fund

Jeffrey Speakes

Downgrade

On Friday, August 5 after the market close, Standard and Poor’s (S&P) announced a downgrade of U.S. Treasury debt from AAA to AA+. This announcement followed Congressional approval of a debt limit increase and ten year plan to cut projected deficit relative to baseline by $2.1 trillion. Evidently, the debt deal . . . → Read More: Downgrade

Michael Puente and Dan Hamilton

The BLS’s July Employment Situation was released today. Non-farm jobs grew by 117,000, highly focused on healthcare, (31,000), retail, (26,000), manufacturing, (24,000), and mining (9,000). Despite the increase in jobs, the measured employment level, an alternate measure of workers, decreased. That decrease was met by a larger decrease to . . . → Read More: The July Jobs Report