Economists

Piece by piece, evidence has begun to accumulate that after four years of lackluster performance, the U.S. economy is on track for stronger growth than many people had expected. The latest support for that view comes from data on consumer spending, which grew at a surprisingly quick pace in February, pushed upward by robust demand for cars and building materials. The report this week from the Commerce Department came just a few days after employment figures showed faster improvement than most economists had projected, in large part because of the strong rebound of the market for housing.

The gig: Christopher Thornberg is founding partner of Beacon Economics, a Los Angeles-based economics consulting firm. Since its founding in 2007, Beacon has provided economic analysis and forecasting for cities, counties and corporate clients. He also worked as chief economic advisor to the state Controller's Office from 2008 to 2012. While he was at the UCLA Anderson Forecast, he began sounding the alarm about an impending housing market crash - and the ensuing recession.

As housing prices soared, Bill McBride sensed a lie. In 2005, the retired technology executive saw signs of the bubble everywhere. He chatted up a woman at his gym who had bought a home priced at 10 times her annual income. He heard "spiky-haired" young mortgage peddlers preaching that "any equity in your home is dead money. " And he read the data: How could homeownership hit record highs as household incomes stagnated? McBride founded his finance blog, Calculated Risk, to warn the world about a looming housing market collapse.

Harvard economists Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart, authors of a widely-cited paper suggesting that high government debt levels lead to low growth -- have responded defensively to a new paper suggesting that their results were due to mathematical and software errors. I reported on the controversy , which is burning up the econ wonk world, earlier today. The original 2010 R & R paper is important because it has provided a scholarly veneer for a wave of fiscal austerity policies around the world, including those coming out of Congress.

Prosperity is feared by conservative economists as a threat to economic stability. BERTRAM R. FORER Westlake Village

Economists brushed off a decline in new residential construction starts last month and instead looked at an increase in permits issued for houses and apartment buildings as a positive indicator that the real estate market is on the mend. Housing starts fell 1.1% from the prior month to hit a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 698,000, the Commerce Department reported. That was a 34.7% surge from February last year. Starts were down 5.9% from the prior month in the West and 12.3% in the Northeast.

WASHINGTON -- Most forecasters are looking at 2013 as being another mediocre year for the economy, but many appear hopeful that growth will accelerate as the year progresses. Beyond that broad outline, the outlook for next year is muddled. The range of economic growth projections is about as wide as it's ever been, reflecting the great fiscal haze hanging over the nation. In its year-end survey released Monday, the National Assn. for Business Economics said the consensus view from its panel of forecasters shows gross domestic product expanding next year at an average annual growth rate of 2.1%.

Even as top Federal Reserve officials continue to defend their economic stimulus, a growing number of industry and academic economists view the Fed's policy now as too aggressive -- with two-thirds of those recently surveyed saying the central bank should terminate its controversial bond-buying program this year. The survey, of 196 members of the National Assn. for Business Economics, found that a slim majority of them consider the central bank's monetary policy as "about right.

The U.S. economy is ready to stage an earnest comeback this year - led by housing starts and auto sales - and California stands to grab a large proportion of the gains, UCLA economists said Wednesday. Although employment growth slowed at the end of last year, the employment picture this year is expected to brighten, helping the U.S. and California shake off their economic doldrums, according to the quarterly UCLA Anderson Forecast. Join us for a live video chat at 1:30 p.m. on the state of the California economy.

It seems that some people never fail to get worked up at the sight of young people standing up to an entrenched power. That's the only way I can explain the vehement reaction to my recent Op-Ed article, " Not their fathers' economics ," about the budding movement against orthodox economics among students from around the world. The general dismissive attitude seems to be that these students have no real right to speak their minds because they're so young that they haven't had a chance to be fully informed.

WASHINGTON -- Economist Mark Zandi reportedly is being considered by the Obama administration to head the federal agency that oversees taxpayer-owned Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as the White House seeks a candidate who could avoid Republican opposition in the Senate. Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics and a former economic advisor to 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain, is being looked at as a nominee for director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.

Japan's central bank took a massive bet to reset its economy and pull out of nearly two decades of deflation. The Bank of Japan announced an aggressive and ambitious plan Thursday to expand its purchase of long-term bonds and double the amount of money in circulation, all in an effort to boost inflation to 2% within two years and stimulate consumer and business spending. The move stoked the Japanese stock market, which gained 2.2% on Thursday and continued rising early Friday, and sent the yen plunging against the dollar.

Proposed legislation to raise the state minimum wage could eliminate tens of thousands of jobs and harm the California economy, a small-business advocacy group said. The measure, AB 10, could wipe out more than 68,000 jobs over 10 years and cost $5.7 billion in lost production of goods and services, according to a study released Tuesday by the National Federation of Independent Business. More than 63% of the lost jobs would be in the small-business sector, NFIB researchers said.

Despite a slight uptick in the unemployment rate in January, Los Angeles County appears poised for steady improvement in 2013 along with the rest of the Golden State. The seasonally adjusted jobless rate in the county rose at the beginning of the year to 10.4% from 10.3% in December, according to data released Friday by the state Employment Development Department. That compares with 9.8% in January for California as a whole, unchanged from the month before. Los Angeles has lagged behind many other coastal counties, such as Orange, San Diego and San Francisco, in the recovery.

Piece by piece, evidence has begun to accumulate that after four years of lackluster performance, the U.S. economy is on track for stronger growth than many people had expected. The latest support for that view comes from data on consumer spending, which grew at a surprisingly quick pace in February, pushed upward by robust demand for cars and building materials. The report this week from the Commerce Department came just a few days after employment figures showed faster improvement than most economists had projected, in large part because of the strong rebound of the market for housing.

The U.S. economy is ready to stage an earnest comeback this year - led by housing starts and auto sales - and California stands to grab a large proportion of the gains, UCLA economists said Wednesday. Although employment growth slowed at the end of last year, the employment picture this year is expected to brighten, helping the U.S. and California shake off their economic doldrums, according to the quarterly UCLA Anderson Forecast. Join us for a live video chat at 1:30 p.m. on the state of the California economy.

WASHINGTON -- With just a few days to go before new government spending cuts are set to take effect, what are the chances that another eleventh-hour action will avert the latest impending hit to the economy? Very little, according to a survey of economists released Monday by the National Assn. for Business Economics. The group said that nearly 60% of economists now expect the so-called sequestration, which will slice about $85 billion from the federal budget, to begin March 1 in full or partial form.

It is true that Clinton has spurned conventional economics and its associated priesthood of academics who resemble quantum physicists rather than humanists. But wasn't the message of Clinton's campaign change, chance, change? And doesn't the fact that traditional economic theory has failed to cure our recession provide enough reason to try a new approach? As an impressionable undergraduate at Berkeley, I aspired to become an economist because I saw how clearly basic economic theories can explain the processes of our society.

The U.S. economy is ready to stage an earnest comeback this year - led by housing starts and auto sales - and California stands to grab a large proportion of the gains, UCLA economists predict. Although employment growth slowed at the end of last year, the employment picture this year is expected to brighten, helping the U.S. and California shake off their economic doldrums, according to the quarterly UCLA Anderson Forecast released Wednesday. Despite recessions in many Eurozone nations and a slowing in exports, the U.S. economy "seems poised for real growth," said David Shulman, a senior economist with the Anderson Forecast.

Even as top Federal Reserve officials continue to defend their economic stimulus, a growing number of industry and academic economists view the Fed's policy now as too aggressive -- with two-thirds of those recently surveyed saying the central bank should terminate its controversial bond-buying program this year. The survey, of 196 members of the National Assn. for Business Economics, found that a slim majority of them consider the central bank's monetary policy as "about right.