Robert Brusca Quotes (92 Quotes)

While concerns about inflation swirl, the evidence continues to give those fears little substance,

The soft spot is looking to be bigger and softer all the time.

This is a little bit like getting a bigger-than-expected package in a much prettier wrapping and huge bow, but you open it up and it's exactly what you thought you were going to get.

Two of the three recent months are above the midpoint line that divides the average layoff performance in recessions from normal layoff periods. This suggests the job market is getting to be more like it is in bad times than in good times,

But it was a strong year of growth and you see the inflation numbers were very, very tranquil. If anything, bonds are going to focus on inflation so we should be seeing a good bond market reaction to this.

We had expected a small braking, a minor tap on the pedal, from GDP growth but not a move down to a lower gear.

Oil prices going up is not inflationary. Inflation is too much money chasing too few goods.

So while some special factors may be boosting spending, the overall trend of spending is well out of line with income growth. This tells us that this spending trend is unsustainable unless consumer income growth picks up sharply.

You can't repeal the laws of economics. Wages in China are so cheap, that you'll never make labor cheap enough in the United States to compete with that.

It means we sort of dodged another bullet on the inflation front. These kinds of numbers put the Federal Reserve in a difficult box. We don't have inflation, the economy is growing too fast, they are afraid it won't keep up, but it's hard for them to raise rates without any inflation on the doorstep.

Wal-Mart still has good prices for 11 months of the year. Consumers won't damn them for one slippage in November, ... But Wal-Mart has some fierce and desperate competitors forming alliances.

It's not that I think inflation will be dead forever, but there are very powerful global forces keeping it low. The bond-market vigilantes are clearly trying to string up the innocent.

This really muddies the waters on jobs, ... I continue to see a lot of labor market distress, and I am more impressed by the sudden weakness in the Challenger report than by the rebound in the cantankerous ISM.

It is no time to be dogmatic.

The trade deficit seems to only get bigger and never recede. The reasons are clear, oil prices are up, foreign growth is still relatively weak and US growth is strong. There is no reason to forecast a lower deficit.

When you get abnormally warm weather, the seasonal factor will blow this up into a big gain. Once we lose this weather effect, we'll see how much of an employment gain we get.

People are aware of what energy prices are doing to their pocketbooks, and their company,

We've still got a lot of job growth, but it's not pressuring the unemployment rate, ... That's a critical thing for the Fed -- between the unemployment rate and the nice average hourly earnings rate figure, which was up only a penny, I think the Federal Reserve will breathe pretty easily with this report.

a little bit of inflation could be a really good thing, but not too much of it.

Layoffs always are higher late in the year. All (the layoff report numbers) suggest that we are still improving compared to last year and there is little real evidence of slippage this month. The slippage was from August to September, but September to October is good number.

Inflation is rising in more sectors than it is falling. It is doing so across horizons of one month, six months and 12 months. We are left in all this wondering what the Fed is up to and what it is waiting for.

Although we've had some slowdowns in this economy, the unemployment rate is very low, the economy is up, and consumer sentiment is up, ... the economy's doing much better than it was four years ago.

This market is wiling to brush away bad news because it doesn't believe in it, ... Compare it to the Three Little Pigs, when there's a warning they say 'we've heard this before.' But one of these days, there is going to be a warning that the market should have listened to.

This is a Fed that should be headquartered in Egypt, because it's in denial.

I would expect the bond is going to do a lot better after this report. You look at this headline (and) it worries you, but then you look at the details in this report and you see what is going on. I think the more people look at this report today, the more they are going to like it, the less they are going to fear it, and the better the bond market is going to do.

On the economic plate, next week's really pretty light. The big event is the big event, four letters F-O-M-C. After the week we just had, we about cleaned up everything we now have plenty of time to focus on the Fed.

Worker productivity generally creates a scenario where employees realize they can begin to demand more for what they do. While the year-over-year productivity gains are still quite good, there is some evidence that wage inflation may be starting to creep in. The Fed won't like this.

Back before the recession, we had strong job growth and no inflation. There's fuzzy thinking going on here -- I thought we'd broken the old idea that strong growth is bad. As long as productivity growth can remain high, fast job growth is not a problem.

No matter which candidate you support, you have to realize there will be a lot of discord in this country, ... And no matter how much you like your candidate, you realize neither one of these guys has a magic bullet for the economy.

This is what the market did in 1974, ahead of a slowdown in 1975, and the Fed continued to hike rates in the face of marginal data turning worse, ... I don't see where the Fed sees 'traction'.

It's a surprise. Certainly the Fed is worried about inflation, but it has been subdued in recent months, so I wouldn't be too concerned about that.

While consumer spending has sparked up a bit recently, linking it to better output growth is still highly speculative.

Eventually you have other prices going down to compensate for the fact that energy went up. But that doesn't work itself out in a month or two it works out over a period of time.

There are so many low-paid people who are educated that education is simply not the answer. The answer is, you will be unemployed if this is not stopped.

A point-three increase is a big increase. ( But ) to the extent the increase was due to tobacco prices, the market may be willing to forgive it, dismiss it, to put it aside.

The Fed has never said this borrowing is a mistake and that this is a problem.

December's result will raise some questions but not enough to alter policy.

We tend to look at this and the Philadelphia index as an indication of what is going on in the overall economy, ... Most disturbing is that order backlogs are running over 50 percent, which is the glorified neutral. It's at 6 percentage points below, that's bad -- it shows companies are cannibalizing orders to move ahead.

We're getting some very good spending going into the first quarter. It's interesting that while there is spending optimism, consumers are still clearly divided into two main categories -- those with lots of money and those that are hurting. That's why these monthly results have shown so much irregularity.

It's really a soft batch of numbers today. Nothing says 'recession' or severe slowdown but there is a consistent signal of softness that permeates these reports and belies some of the strength in consumer spending that we have seen early in the year.

December looks weak but the November revision will stave off too much speculation of weakness.

consumer prices are really going to be under control, as well.

The president has an atrocious record when it come to job growth.

Trends show a sharp surge on auto spending in July but little strength elsewhere. Most disturbing is the ongoing sluggishness for services. Demand there is hovering around (annual) gains of 2 percent. That won't create many jobs.

Everybody knows what the Fed is doing, but no one knows which move is going to impact the market. I call it a version of Federal Reserve water torture a drop at a time and after a while it will drive you absolutely batty.

Oil is an important culprit. But it is much more than that. Non-oil imports rose by 0.6 percent.

The breadth of inflation is contained. Inflation pressures are not spreading. This (CPI) report has much more impressive signals than the PPI.

You count up the products (showing price increases) and you see there's a little more pressure just below the surface, ... The overall energy number showed a big decline. That covers up a lot of ills. But the PPI was the warning shot across the bow. With the CPI report we dodged the bullet.

That mucked up trade flows, affected our economy and brought an unexpected easing by the Fed. I wouldn't downplay the risks out of China.

Inflation decelerated across a broad spectrum of core CPI areas -- about 40 percent of prices in the core showed declines in their year-over-year growth rate. That's a big proportion. The Fed is concerned and has a reason to be concerned.