Banking & Finance
Best of 2018: Winning is the Absence of Losing
by Charles Marohn There are two notable things about this post that made me glad to feature it in our annual “best of” week. The first is that it’s a good year whenever Nassim Taleb publishes a new book. In 2018, it was Skin in the Game, a book that…
Read MoreThe Present We Didn’t Ask For
by Jason D. Norris, CFA Executive Vice President of Research Merry Christmas You Filthy Animal – Home Alone 2, Lost in New York – 1992 That’s how equity investors received the Federal Reserve’s rate hike and comments earlier this week. While expectations were for the Fed to raise the federal…
Read MoreFed Hikes Rates, Market Tumbles
BY: DUY@UOREGON.EDU The Federal Reserve hiked rates as expected at December’s meeting while delivering a more hawkish message than Wall Street was hoping for. Equities tumbled and the yield curve flattened further as Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s press conference wore on. I can’t imagine that the Fed is pleased…
Read MoreEconomic Outlook: On the QT … But QT may not be so quiet this time
Commentary by Robert Whelan, ECONorthwest DECEMBER 2018 “On the QT,” a quintessentially American phrase. It means to keep something confidential. Basically, QT is an abbreviation for “quiet.” But there is a new meaning and you will be hearing it more and more in the coming months. This time it will…
Read MoreAsymmetrical Pricing
By: Adam Cuppy Starting a business is hard enough; setting your price is like calling the shot blindfolded. You might have heard of “asymmetrical risk and reward,” but if you haven’t, let me bring you up to speed… Asymmetrical risk and reward is when you position yourself so that the…
Read MoreOregon’s Per Capita Personal Income 2017
by Christopher Rich Oregon’s total personal income ranked 26th in the nation in 2017, one spot below the 2016 rank. Data on personal income comes from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, a division of the U.S. Department of Commerce. State personal income captures total income within a state and is…
Read MoreLane County Travel Spending Continues to Grow
by Brian Rooney Data from research firm Dean Runyan indicate that spending in the travel and tourism industry continued to grow in 2017 in Lane County after dropping off during the Great Recession. The graph shows that travel spending in Lane County grew throughout the 1990s and peaked in 2008…
Read MoreSOREDI Hosts 2019 SOBC: Igniting Innovation: Building High Impact Communities
By: Codi Spodnik (541) 773-8946 Southern Oregon Regional Economic Development, Inc. (SOREDI) will host their 16th Annual Southern Oregon Business Conference (SOBC) on Thursday, January 31, 2019, from 1:00 – 5:00 pm. Registration begins at 12:30 pm. Held at Inn at the Commons in Medford, this conference seeks to unite…
Read MoreShould Investors be Leaving the Forest?
Background Over the past several years, there has been growing circumstantial evidence that some institutional investors are cashing out of timberland investments in favor of more liquid, and perhaps better performing alternatives. The well-publicized exit of CalPERSs from much of its timberland portfolio, and rumors of divestitures by other longtime…
Read MoreMarkets Rattling Investors, Fed Still Calm
OCTOBER 29, 2018 Equity market turmoil continued throughout last week, raising fresh questions about the Fed’s policy path. I don’t believe that Powell & Co. will panic just yet. I suspect they will take a broad view of incoming data and financial indicators and conclude they have little reason to…
Read MoreTrying Times for a Relentless Optimist
9/17/2018 Article A Letter from Max Williams, OCF President and CEO We are, unfortunately, living in such cynical times that even good deeds are now met with suspicion. Recent articles and opinion pieces in the New Yorker and New York Times do a stunning disservice to philanthropy at this critical moment…
Read MoreEntering the Danger Zone
As we wait for Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to take the podium in Jackson Hole and impart some wisdom on the economy and hopefully provide policy guidance as well, it is worth considering that we may be soon be entering a dangerous period for monetary policy – the time…
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