Paul Kasriel Quotations

We really don't want to give Greenspan a grade yet. You want to wait a year or two to see whether the seeds turn to weeds.

There are a lot of crosscurrents now, but falling yields might indicate that demand for credit is slowing down and that the Fed, by holding the fed funds rate where it is, is actually keeping rates all along the curve from falling to their equilibrium level, or to the level where would they would more naturally go.

O'Neill was like the offensive line of the Green Bay Packers playing in a dome -- they can't hear signals. O'Neill couldn't hear the signals the White House was sending, and they got rid of him. Presumably, Snow has better hearing.

I agree with Gross. It's been refinancing of mortgages -- basically eating into one's seed corn -- that has been sustaining consumer spending. When that peters out, it's not clear what's going to kick in.

I think there are some members who would prefer that the funds rate be at 3 percent, but I suspect there is a little concern about moving too fast and upsetting the household sector.

Sustained economic growth is dependent on profit growth. Without profits, there will be no new hiring of workers and no new capital spending.

When you're the world's banker, you really need to maintain the world's confidence in you and your currency. If you start telling creditors you're going to pay them back in currency that doesn't buy as much, they won't want to bank with you any more.

When the fog of war is finally lifted, we may find that economic growth remains weak because monetary policy turns out to be less accommodative than the Fed thought,

Those who have lived through the 1970s remember the tremendous toll that accelerating inflation took on the economy and vowed to never make that mistake again,

We should get a little better growth in the second half -- but not enough. By the end of the year, maybe we will have enough to stabilize the unemployment rate, but I think we will probably see a further drift up in the unemployment rate.

I've thought there would be some moderation in consumer spending this year, but I also thought that job growth would be better at this point than it has been. It may be that consumer spending will moderate even more than what I'm forecasting.

A recession is in the eye of the beholder, and the eye of the NBER, but clearly we're struggling here. We're at stall speed and it's not clear what, in the short term, is going to get the economy's nose up.

You're going to see good profit growth over the next several quarters, but it's not going to be as strong as it's been of late. Still, it will be better than a poke in the eye.

There may be somebody else taking the baton now, which is not unusual in a recovery. Housing is typically the leader out of the desert to the promised land; but, just like Moses didn't make it to the promised land, as rates rise, housing doesn't quite make it, either. Other sectors do.

A bursting of the housing bubble could result in a severe recession.

It seems that what it allows you to do is ... stay in business with somewhat of an unfair advantage over your competitors, who still do have to pay their debts and pay interest on those debts.

It's growing rapidly, and it does suggest that we're going to see at least a temporary pickup in economic activity.

The yield curve has been one of the more reliable indicators of turning points, not necessarily recessions, but slowdowns in the economy.

The new data are pointing toward a bottoming out in the manufacturing sector,

The Fed is happy to provide all the reserves the banking system needs, ... It's told the banking system 'Ya'll lend now,' and they're doing it.

In a longer-run sense, I would view it as marginally unproductive, a worsening of the trade-off between growth and inflation, ... But will we be able to detect that? I doubt it.

If Republicans were to regain control of the Senate, the probabilities of some major tax cuts would go up quite dramatically. If those tax cuts were implemented, this would have a positive impact on both the economy and the stock market.

If people start losing their jobs, ... it's going to be hard for them to keep current on all that debt.

If he starts to see softness in the economy, and if in fact inflation is moderating, he will want to cut rates a little bit in order to have a soft landing.

And rates are not likely to be adjusting downward. Households are paying about 13.75 percent of their aggregate tax income to service debt -- and it is going to go higher.

The dollar would have fallen faster or further had there not been this massive central bank intervention. If in fact they are going to cut back on their dollar-support activities, then the dollar is going to resume its decline, and that's going to have some inflationary implications.