About: William Holstein

Give me a break. Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group, was quoted as saying this after the latest job numbers were reported: “I think we’ve finally reached the promised land of a self-sustaining, self-reinforcing economic recovery.” It sure doesn’t feel like the promised land to millions of Americans who can’t find well-paying […]…

It was terribly civil of UCLA to come out and answer the questions that I raised in a blog last week. According to this article in the Wall Street Journal, it looks to me like it is a sound management structure and philosophy. I have great hopes that this model spreads throughout the United States. […]…

I know everyone is suffering brain fatigue talking about big concepts like globalization, but I was struck by how Eduardo Porter of the Times just didn’t get it right in a commentary this week. So I have poured it in below and annotated it IN ALL CAPS…. Globalization Is in Retreat? Not So Fast SEPT. […]…

This is very interesting but also potentially problematic. It’s interesting and positive because the funding that allows ideas to be spun out of research labs at universities is in perilously short supply. The absence of seed stage capital is holding back a lot of great ideas. The potential problems are in how the university manages […]…

These guys in the Metropolitan Studies program at the Brookings Institute are soul mates of mine. In this report, they zero in on how the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) labs, which are enormous repositories of cutting-edge technologies, should be engaging more deeply with the regional economies around them. The report  argues that the frequently […]…