Bill Cheney Clearly Quotations

The economy is neither roaring nor stalling; it's clearly out of the soft patch and moving along at a decent pace, and that's all the Fed needs right now.

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

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.

Most of the really alarming data has related to the manufacturing sector, which clearly is slumping. But since it only accounts for about 15 percent of total employment, it isn't dragging everything else down.

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.