News

“Personal income increased $52.5 billion, or 0.3 percent, and disposable personal income (DPI) increased $47.1 billion, or 0.4 percent, in August, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $54.9 billion, or 0.4 percent.  In July, personal income increased $69.6 billion, or 0.5 percent, DPI increased $63.9 billion, or 0.5 percent, and PCE increased $45.7 billion, or 0.4 percent, based on revised estimates.”

“Housing in California — already considered unaffordable to many — will become even less affordable over the next two years, with construction unable to keep up with demand, according to a UCLA economic forecast released Monday.”

“The forecast for the national economy for the next two years is a healthy one, a slim chance of a recession and a slight chance of a surge in growth. In California, the forecast remains largely unchanged since June. Growth in employment in California will continue, albeit it at a slower pace by 2017, as the unemployment rate falls to about 4.8 percent, similar to that of the nation as a whole.”

“Taken together, the voluminous data dumps reveal that those on the upper rungs of the economic ladder, and the communities in which they cluster, particularly in the Bay Area, are doing well. However, very large portions of the state, both geographically and sociologically, are struggling.”

“Real gross domestic product — the value of the goods and services produced by the nation’s economy less the value of the goods and services used up in production, adjusted for price changes — increased at an annual rate of 3.9 percent in the second quarter of 2015, according to the “”third”” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the first quarter, real GDP increased 0.6 percent. . . In the second estimate, the increase in real GDP was 3.7 percent. With the third estimate for the second quarter, the general picture of economic growth remains the same; personal consumption expenditures (PCE) and nonresidential fixed investment increased more than previously estimated . . . “

“The technology-heavy San Francisco Bay Area almost single-handedly propped up California’s otherwise lethargic economic performance in 2014, a new report from the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis indicates.”

The exact amount of the new water bond has yet to be determined but will be less than $5 billion, Jerry Meral, director of the California water program at the Natural Heritage Institute, told Reuters this week.

China is preparing to announce plans to launch a national system to limit greenhouse gases and force industries to purchase pollution credits, Obama administration officials said Thursday.

The administration on Thursday staged a show of force. While the Democratic governor appeared in New York to promote climate change policies at a meeting of the United Nations, the California Air Resources Board convened in Sacramento to consider renewing the state’s low carbon fuel standard, a central part of California’s greenhouse gas reduction program.

It turns out the land’s new owner wasn’t a public agency or a solar developer. It was the Cox family, one of the most prominent in Imperial County. And they got a killer deal on it. The solar company that once eyed the property – known as the Mayflower plot – paid the irrigation district $2.24 million for the land and then handed it over to the family nine days later. . . All of this was facilitated by the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, the state’s premier environmental law.

The most important step our schools can take to help close the achievement gap, ready our students for college, and prepare our students for work in the 21st century, is to ensure that all students have equal access to effective teachers. These statutes operate counter to that goal by elevating seniority over the ability to improve student achievement, and undermining our schools’ ability to impose quality controls on their staff. Such quality controls are necessary for ensuring that all students have equal access to the sorts of teachers that are capable of teaching the 21st century skills students deserve to learn and need to succeed.

Real GDP increased in 282 of the nation’s 381 metropolitan areas in 2014, led by growth in several industry groups: professional and business services, wholesale and retail trade, and the group of finance, insurance, real estate, rental, and leasing. Natural resources and mining remained a strong contributor to growth in several metropolitan areas. Collectively, real GDP for U. S. metropolitan areas increased 2.3 percent in 2014 after increasing 1.9 percent in 2013.

The average annual cost of an employer family plan rose 4%, to $17,545, from $16,834 last year, according to the annual poll of employers performed by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation along with the Health Research & Educational Trust, a nonprofit affiliated with the American Hospital Association. The share of the 2015 family-plan premium borne by employees was 29% of the total, the same percentage as last year.

Just when Southern California motorists were expecting to see some relief from high gasoline prices in the next few weeks, they now may have to wait well into next winter — at least..

Thanks to a global economic slowdown, the price of oil has plunged 60%—to $40 a barrel from $96 in August 2014. Yet the price of gasoline across the U.S. has fallen by only 25% over the same period. What gives? Multiple and overlapping regulatory barriers prevent refiners from moving to alternative sources of crude and from entering markets to fill supply shortages. The result: a regulatory price premium in every gallon of gas.