Free Republic

California's Economic Forecast is Dismal Despite so-called “progressives” promising their policies will create a Soviet-style worker’s paradise, California’s leftist Democrats have turned the once Golden State into a sh*thole through decades of leftist policies penalizing and demonizing employers, businesses, property owners, innovators, entrepreneurs—and really, anyone who wants to work hard and get ahead. These hard working people are responding by fleeing liberal California for conservative red states. The perception across America is that California is the state people are leaving. And that perception is accurate.

The White House’s mid-session forecast of economic trends says that in 2012 unemployment will remain at 9.0 percent and economic growth will be only 2.9 percent, and that the 10-year deficit will drop by $1.37 trillion compared to its previous forecast in February. The report predicts annual budget deficits of roughly $515 billion after 2014, and a cumulative 2011–2021 deficit of $7 trillion. This long-term forecast is vulnerable to even minor changes in economic conditions. For example, the report says that August’s economic data shifted its forecast of the cumulative 10-year deficit upward by $220 billion, partly because of higher...

The race to the bottom for first-quarter GDP projections has a new leader: Bank of America Merrill Lynch. With a succession of mild unemployment drops unable to ease concerns about the larger slow-growth story for the US economy, BofAML now sees the quarter’s growth prospects at just 1.5 percent. The firm’s forecast, in a research note Monday from economist Ethan S. Harris, makes JPMorgan Chase’s [JPM 46.58 0.24 (+0.52%) ] outlook of 2.5 percent seem downright rosy and jibes with a recent warning from Capital Economics that the economy is at a crawl and unlikely to do better than 2...

The nation and the state will experience an economic malaise into 2008, but a recession is not in the cards, according to a report by UCLA Anderson Forecast. Housing will continue to drag on the economy in the first half of 2008, but should begin a slow recovery thereafter. While housing declines in the past have been good indicators of recessions, the latest decline is not coupled with the job loss that plunges an economy into recession. "There's going to be an extended period of economic sluggishness," said Edward Leamer, director of the UCLA Anderson Forecast. "It's going to be...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The United States is headed for a recession that will be "much nastier, deeper and more protracted" than the 2001 recession, says Nouriel Roubini, president of Roubini Global Economics. Writing on his blog Wednesday, Roubini repeated his call that the U.S. would be in recession in 2007, arguing that the collapse of housing would bring down the rest of the economy. Roubini wrote after the National Association of Realtors reported Wednesday that sales of existing homes fell 4.1% in July, while inventories soared to a 13-year high and prices flattened out on a year-over-year basis. 'This is...

12:52 P.M. EST MR. McCLELLAN: Good afternoon, everyone. I have one announcement to begin with. The administration, today, is releasing an updated economic forecast that shows the strong economic expansion in the United States is expected to continue, with healthy job creation and contained inflation. The new economic forecast, which will be used for the President's fiscal year 2007 budget, is similar to the consensus of professional, independent economic forecasters and our previous forecasts that we have released. Early indicators of activity suggest that the growth of real gross domestic product, or GDP, during the four quarters of 2005 will...

LOS ANGELES — In its second quarterly report of the year, the UCLA Anderson Forecast suggests that the U.S. economy will experience slower than normal growth through 2006 because of weakness in housing, but not a dramatic slowdown. The National Forecast UCLA Anderson Forecast Director Edward Leamer says that the economy will continue to experience sluggish growth through 2006, but that “the likelihood of a recession within a year is minimal.” According to Leamer and to the quarterly report authored by UCLA Anderson Forecast Senior Economist Michael Bazdarich, the conditions for a recession are in place. For several years now,...