Steven Wieting Quotations

Many of the understandable sources of recovery have been expended in the first half of 2002, leaving growth drivers into 2003 a mystery.

It comes down to a political choice, ... whether this is the kind of thing where you happily wait and continue unemployment insurance in the hope that certain industries bounce back cyclically, or you accept the fact that certain job categories are gone for good.

If you look at labor demand, you should be getting a decent trend. It was only June data that fell below that trend.

That kind of decline is a perfect fit with what we've seen in the household survey's measure of employment, ... if not in February, then in future benchmark revisions.

We're not expecting an entirely clean read for the durable goods report. The business confidence data began to bottom at the end of June and that's encouraging. We probably will see modest gains in consumer activity and eventually the business cycle will catch up to that. But so far, everything right now is pointing to frustrating moderate economic growth for the time being,

The fact is orders just hit a wall in June and July.

It's one of those rare Goldilocks reports, ... The idea here that there is still potential slack, the pool of available labor.

However, a much larger drag seemed possible after the October surge, and a good portion of the rise will be offset by a gain in inventories in the quarter.

Estimates have to come down. We're in for an ugly preannouncement season.

Even if energy hangs out at these historically high levels, headline inflation should slow down in the coming year.