Ethan Harris Major Quotations

Only with very weak U.S. growth or a major drop in the U.S. dollar will the trade deficit improve on a sustained basis. The reason you need these dramatic movements is that the U.S. has, according to almost every study, an incredible appetite for imports.

I don't think this should alter anybody's views about the Fed in a major way.

It's not as friendly as some of the other inflation numbers, but it's just one indicator. We have no inflation warning signals from any of the other major inflation indicators.

We're not going to be in a recession if the economy reverses quickly. But if the war keeps going on, recession is a major risk.

There's this alternative scenario where the financial crisis starts to bleed into the economy in a major way,

We knew we would have a very weak number because of a collapse in auto sales after two big months in a row and the incentives kind of stop working ... But if you look at the rest of the report, every single major component was up. It was very broad-based growth across many components.