Robert Brusca Quotations

We're getting sort-of mixed results with what is happening in the economy.

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.

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.

We're still seeing job cuts in manufacturing, and it's going to stay that way for some time.

There is a reason for stock markets to be worried. But I don't think we need to talk about recession yet -- it's not on the radar screen.

The extent to which it feeds back to you and me is that banks become less aggressive about taking risk ... and this could curtail economic activity.

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.

LTCM didn't cause this; LTCM got caught up in this,

Levels of home sales are still solid. And with rates falling, some (continued) rebound may be seen in the next few months. But we appear to be near to a peak.

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.

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.

Most people were afraid that we'd start to see some inflation, but I don't think there's much here. The Fed still has its foot on brakes and will keep tapping them at regular intervals, but perhaps not as much as investors had been expecting.

Maybe the markets are glad to know they've got a cautionary guard at the monetary door,

No doubt the numbers look pretty good up and down the line. However, I'm not convinced yet that the holidays are home free.

On the positive side, one survey suggests that more consumers this year are delaying their shopping until later in the season. If that's true, sales will get another boost in December.

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.

I wouldn't want to tell any big story off these numbers.

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.

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.

But even if you have a weak number next month, even if you get zero growth, you'd be averaging about 150,000 new jobs a month (for the last six months.) So the Fed would need to see something less than zero to change its mind.

I find it just odd for all these economists and policy makers to be cheering for all this consumer spending when we're just digging ourselves into a hole. With all the obligations we have ahead, to retirees and to ourselves, we have all the reasons in the world for people to be saving more and be controlling their spending.

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.

I think we're going to have a slower recovery, ... There are other things that suggest there are limits to what the Fed can do.

I think that one of the lessons in history is that if any party has too much control, the danger is that they will go overboard. The challenge for this administration is going to be to keep control of things.

I think some of the job growth has been pushed forward. Behind the surface of these very strong reports, there are signs the economy has begun to slow down.

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

Some of the signals pointing to job market improvement simply did not bear fruit this month. The report makes the economy look even less like it is building a head of steam.

My view is the previous months were the aberrant month, and June makes more sense.

I still have my problems with the economy and how strong it's doing,

It doesn't tell you anything about the economy at this point. It just gives you some idea of the magnitude of the displacement in the affected area.

The American consumer is like that bad guy in a zombie movie; shoot him; stab him. He keeps coming forward. But in the case of the consumer, it's more like: depress his wage, make him unemployed, ruin his confidence make no job growth, lower his savings rate -- none of it matters, he or she just keeps on racking up those charges.

Where was wealth effect during that time? ... The consumer didn't die. People lost all kinds of money in the stock market, and it didn't seem to affect them.

We continue to see Federal Reserve officials saying they want the economy to grow as fast as it can, but they're the ones who determine where that speed limit is.

While everybody is very happy with the performance of the economy under Greenspan, it's come at quite a price. We have a negative savings rate. The consumer has been out spending his and her income, partly supported by an increase in housing prices, where people had to pull a lot of the equity out of their home. Well they can't do that again.

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

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

We have a lot of things suggesting that maybe things have improved, ... I don't see any reason to go against the numbers.

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

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

There are other real issues we need to look into before we begin posing solutions to problems that don't exist.

You don't need an economist to tell you how disastrous they look.

The conundrum is the Fed, and why the it keeps raising rates.

The fact that food sales outperformed other product categories last month is part of what's going on with the economy and its impact on consumers, ... Also, there was a time when Wal-Mart was eating everyone's lunch. Other stores have been getting their act together and they've reduced the growth gap between them and Wal-Mart.

What we see is a Fed president trying to be honest with us.

We can't pump out jobs at the rate of 300,000 a month. Numbers as high as even 200,000 a month, they're even too much.

We are coming off strong numbers, and I don't think we would want to say bad things about the housing market on the basis of these numbers alone.

We knew jobs were front-end loaded because of the weather. Even so, this is dramatic.

To me, the concern right now is that holiday shopping has been spotty . We had a great Black Friday , the week after that was miserable and then sales ticked up again after that,

The problem, ... is that the markets have fallen sharply and they've fallen because all these financial shenanigans are coming unraveled.

There are rates that may not move at all and there are rates that may move opposite to what the Fed has done.

This refunding went really poorly. People still have nagging concerns,

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.

This shows the Fed rate cut was really quite needed, ... and would probably suggest the Fed might have more work to do to hold things together.

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.

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,

You can make the case that bad things happen in October.

Those two things could come into collision, and cause you to get faster hiring in the first part of the year, then have it catches up with you later,

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.

What's going on here is we've got a lot of growth. We've seen very, very strong consumption.

As the rest of the world begins to recover and capital finds a better home overseas because U.S. bond yields don't look attractive and the U.S. stock markets looks like it fully valued or overvalued, ... (then) money doesn't flow here. And when money doesn't flow here, it starts to push bond yields up, and that starts to slow our growth and make the stock market look worse, and you start to get into this vicious circle instead of this wonderful circle you're in now.

Credibility is a key here. The Fed can't go out hammering away at some of these issues and then say, 'Oh, never mind,' when one of the key dates comes. So I think that's something else that sort of forces the Fed to put its cards on the table.

During this recent period there may be some extra spending on the part of those recovering from hurricane disasters. But it is also true that comprehensive consumer spending has been outstripping income growth over this period,

Each Fed Chairman has to go through his own, on-the-job, trial by fire. There is no other way.

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.

The trade deficit seems to only get bigger and never recede.

The tone seems a bit hawkish -- he admits to little in the way of signs of softness in the economy or risks to growth.

The rise, however, does not mean that housing is out of the woods -- far from it. The Fed is still hiking.

The stock market is earnings-oriented. But if you're looking at earnings, you're not seeing anything improving.

The sell-off in bonds is for real and is the correct reaction. The Fed will need confirmation to act. The bond market won't. It takes no prisoners.

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

The tale of the zombie consumer continues, ... There is no stopping him or her: Can't shoot 'em, stab 'em, or keep 'em away from the stores with garlic -- especially with post-season sales in progress.

Prices don't decline like this unless you've got a lot of slack demand conditions.

Private sector job growth is still challenged. The report is not very good for the month alone, but the trends have actually improved, thanks to the revisions.

People don't look at economic data. But they know their own firm, they know if it's solid, they know if it's hiring and if people are getting raises. Even if they're not looking for a job, they know what's going on with their brother or sister or friend's job search. That's what makes these surveys powerful.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

This is an economy that is giving contradictory signals. You don't have companies willing to build inventories, which show that they don't have a lot of confidence. Retailers are pumping sales by discounts, but you can't inflate confidence.

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

This is a big leakage for our economy. We're at a very complicated situation with our economy.

This is a big leakage for our economy, ... We're at a very complicated situation with our economy.

A lot of the main components are still showing weakness. We still have orders declining, and order backlogs haven't built up to any particular degree. This is the picture of a still-weak manufacturing sector.

They are desperately concerned about maintaining inflation fighting credibility. So the Fed is not focused on inflation, it's focused on inflation in the future.

The report is still a poor one given what has come before, but not terrible,

This is very, very much in line with the idea we're slipping into a recession.

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 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'.

This is the way inflation gains a toe hold,

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.

It's a surprise -- we thought the unemployment rate would be edging up.

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.

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.