Bill Cheney Good Quotations

There is a perfectly good chance they will pause at the next meeting.

By mid to late October, you're getting into the fourth quarter, and people are starting to look at their year-end results and deciding whether they can bail out now and still look good for the year. That's going to be as true now as it was (in 1987).

But you have to come back to the fact that another good month is another good month. And that is good news for the economic recovery.

The moment they think there are jobs there, they'll be out looking and the employment rate will start heading up again. I think that's on the whole a good sign at this point in the cycle.

There must be some serious gains going on in either profits or wage rates. If it's going to profits, we should see more capital spending and hiring ahead, and if it's going to wages or lower prices, that should sustain consumption growth. Either way, it's good for the outlook.

The good news for workers is that productivity growth cannot continue at this pace. Demand will translate into jobs very soon, and in fact I think it's happening 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.

While we're still skating on the edge of recession, I think the outlook for the economy is now quite encouraging. We may not feel great right now, but if a recession is a nasty case of the flu, the good news is that all we're suffering now is just a really bad cold.

Today's employment report is just one month's report, but it's the one we've been waiting for, providing unambiguous good news about the labor market.

Now we're starting to see that wash out, and we're seeing that the labor market really has been gradually strengthening for most of the first half of this year. And this is fundamentally good news for consumers and for the health of the recovery going forward.

Rising unemployment, ironically, contains good news. It signals people who had given up and dropped out of the work force are back looking for jobs. Clearly, they have hope there are jobs to be found.

Given the absence of core inflation, it seems to me as good a time as any to pause and see what's happening for a few months rather than overshoot and risk a recession.

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.