Bill Cheney Quotes (76 Quotes)

It's clearly good news. Clearly it means that the Fed is still free to ease as much as they are inclined to.

The headline number is absolutely kind of a shock, I think the bond market is probably overreacting. It's a bounce back from September, but we're still not gaining back all the ground lost in September. The underlying trend is still kind of down.

We have solid job growth, but no significant inflationary pressures.

The bottom line is, any number over 50 is encouraging. The fact that it's a little less than the consensus was expecting I don't think is that big of a deal.

It's shocking that you're looking at almost no growth anywhere else.

What worries me the most is a slip backward becoming a spiral downward. Jobs are the linchpin of both consumer confidence and consumer spending. We can't sustain many more losses like this without that downward spiral getting started. This is the kind of data that could make the Fed think about easing again.

Rising unemployment, ironically, contains good news. It signals people who had given up and dropped out of the work force are back looking for jobs. Clearly, they have hope there are jobs to be found.

Next week's employment report will be a much more important piece of new information.

Looking forward, we have Katrina and the price of oil to worry about. I think the odds are still against it, but Hurricane Katrina could prove to be the exogenous shock that we've feared could dramatically slow or even derail the expansion.

If there are danger signs brewing ... that make people very, very nervous, I don't see anything that could prevent the same kind of mood (as Black Monday's) from reappearing. It's clear that you don't need a very concrete, cut-and-dried kind of trigger to make people stampede if they're in the mood to be stampeded.

Every time you see another indicator that they (consumers) are still spending, that's encouraging.

Friday's report probably reduces the odds of the Fed making another move at its next meeting. This is fairly benign report it would have taken something a bit worse than this to get the Fed to move again.

When demand does start to rebound, the Fed will have to deal with the delayed effects of a year of aggressive monetary stimulus. Short-term rates will almost certainly have to rise faster and farther than seems credible today. Of course, this is a problem that we now feel we would enjoy facing.

The retail sales number is perhaps more important than it would look at first sight. Since we're coming so close to the Christmas shopping season when most of the retail sales of the year happen, anything that represents a gauge of consumer sentiment and consumer buying patterns is going to be latched onto by the retail industry as an important indicator.

This is kind of number that will let the Fed relax and keep cutting rates as long as they see a need.

We knew that it was a wet month and that rain tends to keep people away from shopping, so I thing a large part of this is actually a weather story.

This is a perfect jobs report. Job growth slowed significantly and there are absolutely no signs of inflation. Greenspan may be pulling off what once seemed impossible two soft landings in one economic expansion.

With the war over, energy prices declining, and fiscal and monetary stimulus already pumped into the system, I'm with Alan Greenspan in expecting that the economy now will begin to perk up.

Even though there probably is a recovery in the pipeline, there isn't going to be any clear evidence of it by the time we get around to the next meeting.

The good news for workers is that productivity growth cannot continue at this pace. Demand will translate into jobs very soon, and in fact I think it's happening right now.

Even though it's improving, there's still an awful lot of people who dropped out of work force and are waiting to be pulled back in.

There is still a big backlog to be made up before it feels like a tight job market. Clearly it's a tighter job market than it was a year ago, and if we continue to add a million jobs a quarter, we'll move in that direction. But I think it will take a little bit of time.

I don't really see this as down it's really flat. We're still at a level well above the post-Sept. 11 low and so long as it doesn't trend downward, I'm comfortable with the idea that consumer spending is going to hang in there.

With the tide turning on job growth, consumer sentiment going into the holidays is far better than last year, even if it's not quite happy days are here again.

The fact that prices have come down makes people feel better and they think the future looks better.

There really is no inflation problem right now, and there's certainly nothing in the pipeline, with the economy as weak as it is.

Sooner or later rates will have to come back up to at least a 'neutral' level. But for now they've got the monetary policy lever just about where they want it, and it makes sense to do as little as possible for as long as possible.

By mid to late October, you're getting into the fourth quarter, and people are starting to look at their year-end results and deciding whether they can bail out now and still look good for the year. That's going to be as true now as it was (in 1987).

It's still the same story, that there really is no inflation problem at this stage of the cycle.

This is consistent with the view that the U.S. economy really is on the road to recovery. Consumers are not pulling back. Consumer spending is going to get us into a second half 2001 rebound.

Many businesses see statistics showing economic growth as a cruel joke. Competition is still brutal, wages are still rising, prices are still flat or falling, and profits are as hard to find as they were a year ago.

With the U.S. slowdown looking more real each day, the trade deficit may have passed its peak. The slowdown hadn't hit full force yet in October. U.S. consumers are still sucking in massive amounts of imports. The slowdown will be more clearly seen in November and December's figures. If imported goods start to pile up on retailers' shelves this holiday season, imports could drop off fast.

Hurricane Katrina undoubtedly devastated individuals and communities... but on a macro-economic basis it's clear that the US economy has more than enough momentum to absorb the hit and recover quickly.

It reflects that people mostly still have their jobs, still have their money and people are still buying houses.

Job growth has kind of stalled out. It's a puzzle.

Now we're starting to see that wash out, and we're seeing that the labor market really has been gradually strengthening for most of the first half of this year. And this is fundamentally good news for consumers and for the health of the recovery going forward.

The advance GDP report is a funny animal. It's a combination of data that's already out there combined with official guesses. There isn't a lot of real new news.

It's another in the long series of the no-news-is-good-news story about inflation.

Today's rate cut was no surprise. Even the half-point cut was more or less expected. In fact, the economy is still weak enough for the Fed to feel free to keep easing.

With today's report, the odds of a negative quarter of GDP (gross domestic product) growth have increased substantially.

We're not only stuck in a soft patch we're spinning our wheels. To get back to full employment, we need a lot more demand, and that's hard to see coming anytime soon from either domestic or international sources.

It would be kind of like when they put through a substantial emergency rate cut when the market crashed in 1987. I don't think it is evidence of panic to treat what happened yesterday as an emergency. It's an emergency on many levels.

Given the volatility of the report, I don't put a lot of credence in the forecasts. The headline number is the news and the fact that it went up signals that the recovery isn't falling apart.

A lot of people must still be sitting on the sidelines. This kind of job growth will encourage them, but I don't see it sparking a surge in wage costs. We still have a lot more room for job growth before we have to worry about venturing into dangerous inflationary territory.

We've gotten to a point now where inflation is something which, for the most part, we don't really think about. And I guess that's exactly the way Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan wants it.

But you have to come back to the fact that another good month is another good month. And that is good news for the economic recovery.

You are seeing a large number of people coming out of the woodwork because there are jobs to be found. People are now looking for jobs because it is now worth looking.

I think it is clear that, whatever the economic outlook was on Monday, the outlook is shakier now, and there are stronger arguments for cutting rates.

Clearly the August spending data confirm that consumer spending was on the weak side but still in positive territory, which I think would have confirmed a consensus view that the worst was probably past.

The rise in wages of 6 cents might cause jitters, but wage inflation is less of a worry now, especially with productivity still growing at a healthy clip. As the economy slows, the unemployment rate will continue to inch up and wage pressures should ease further.