Bill Cheney Quotations

With today's report, the odds of a negative quarter of GDP growth have increased substantially, and the chances of a full-fledged recession just went up -- perhaps approaching 50-50. Job losses cut directly into the spending of the newly unemployed, and indirectly tend to have a very real impact on the confidence of those who are still working. If demand falls, firms will lay off more employees, and the downward spiral could put us over the edge into a bona fide recession before the Fed's actions can take effect.

With today's report, the odds of a negative quarter of GDP (gross domestic product) growth have increased substantially.

We're still several months away from job growth catching up with labor force growth and driving the unemployment rate back down, but that's really just a matter of time. Our economy is moving again, and once that happens it's actually quite hard to stop the forward momentum.

We're still looking at job growth, but not enough to prevent unemployment from rising. If there were no special factors explaining this, it would be a rather dramatic piece of news.

The fact that prices have come down makes people feel better and they think the future looks better.

We have solid job growth, but no significant inflationary pressures.

Many businesses see statistics showing economic growth as a cruel joke. Competition is still brutal, wages are still rising, prices are still flat or falling, and profits are as hard to find as they were a year ago.

Monetary policy is the perfect instrument for these circumstances. The Fed can keep pushing as needed, but still can turn on a dime and pull back as soon as spending starts to rebound.

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.

Next week's employment report will be a much more important piece of new information.

But that's still largely a hope, not a certainty.

Businesses seem to be doing everything they can to increase profits without increasing hiring. Unfortunately for the labor market, they appear to be quite successful.

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.

I don't think it really suggests there is any inflation developing -- a 0.3 percent rise in wages is pretty manageable. But it's a pretty positive report; it suggests that the overall jobs market is pretty healthy.

Given the volatility of the report, I don't put a lot of credence in the forecasts. The headline number is the news and the fact that it went up signals that the recovery isn't falling apart.

What worries me the most is a slip backward becoming a spiral downward. Jobs are the linchpin of both consumer confidence and consumer spending. We can't sustain many more losses like this without that downward spiral getting started. This is the kind of data that could make the Fed think about easing again.

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

Unless we're missing something, the unemployment rate will be shooting back up again very soon.

Hurricane Katrina undoubtedly devastated individuals and communities... but on a macro-economic basis it's clear that the US economy has more than enough momentum to absorb the hit and recover quickly.

Job losses cut directly into the spending of the newly unemployed, and indirectly tend to have a very real impact on the confidence of those who are still working. If demand falls, firms will lay off more employees, and the downward spiral could put us over the edge into a bona fide recession before the Fed's actions can take effect.

Job growth has kind of stalled out. It's a puzzle.

I think it is clear that, whatever the economic outlook was on Monday, the outlook is shakier now, and there are stronger arguments for cutting rates.

It certainly too soon to be sure, but I think it's a very strong indication that hiring is getting on track.

I think the job market is on a roll. Businesses are doing pretty well these days. Profits are growing nicely. I think businesses are at a point where they feel more comfortable adding people.

I think the job market is on a roll.

I think the economy's momentum is still upward, but the data that have come out in the past month have weakened my confidence in that prediction. I haven't changed my forecast, but I've become a lot less certain about it.

I think we're toward the end of a period of real weakness and, by the third quarter, all the money (Fed Chairman Alan) Greenspan and the Fed have been pumping out will start to be spent.

I think it's totally a blip. I expect to see pretty healthy growth in 2006. We'll be back to 4 percent next quarter.

I think this report will lead the Fed to be much more aggressive than we would have expected a month ago. An inter-meeting cut seems far more likely now, and a cut at the May (policy makers) meeting seems all but certain.

I think we're going to see absolutely more of the same. I don't think there will be any discernible change in the conduct of setting monetary policy.

People are now looking for jobs because it is now worth looking.

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.

Regardless of what happens to energy prices and interest rates, homebuilding is going to happen and that's going to affect the national statistics but not by a huge amount ... it sort of disappears in the context of the national economy.

Record or near-record trade deficits spark howls of concern about the threat posed to the economic expansion, but like inflation, the trade deficit's bark has been far worse than its bite. April's deficit, another near record, simply shows that we are still importing like there is no tomorrow.

Looking forward, we have Katrina and the price of oil to worry about. I think the odds are still against it, but Hurricane Katrina could prove to be the exogenous shock that we've feared could dramatically slow or even derail the expansion.

Looking ahead beyond the current gloom, there is a serious risk that we already have inflationary forces baked into the system. By late spring, the Fed could be cranking up interest rates even faster than they cut them.

It fits in with the picture that the labor market is turned, inflation has turned and in a few more months they'll be tightening.

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.

The advance GDP report is a funny animal. It's a combination of data that's already out there combined with official guesses. There isn't a lot of real new news.

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.

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.

With the tide turning on job growth, consumer sentiment going into the holidays is far better than last year, even if it's not quite happy days are here again.

Today's rate cut was no surprise. Even the half-point cut was more or less expected. In fact, the economy is still weak enough for the Fed to feel free to keep easing.

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.

Weak employment growth but higher hourly earnings point Greenspan and the Fed in two different directions. Either the economy is slowing down and the Fed needs to sit tight, or inflation is starting to take off and another tap on the brakes may be necessary.

When demand does start to rebound, the Fed will have to deal with the delayed effects of a year of aggressive monetary stimulus. Short-term rates will almost certainly have to rise faster and farther than seems credible today. Of course, this is a problem that we now feel we would enjoy facing.

There is a certain appeal to going to a nice round number like 5 percent. But if we get some bad inflation numbers, then they won't stop at 5 percent.

We knew that it was a wet month and that rain tends to keep people away from shopping, so I thing a large part of this is actually a weather story.

We're not only stuck in a soft patch; we're spinning our wheels. To get back to full employment, we need a lot more demand, and that's hard to see coming anytime soon from either domestic or international sources.

There are a lot of untied ends so far, but we want to get these students into school, in a stable environment, as soon as possible. We want these students to be in an environment where they will be cared for - that will help them rebuild their lives and give them a sense that they are moving on.

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.

We were expecting to celebrate New Year's and instead got slapped with a pink slip.

While the labor market may feel like the weakest link in the recovery, really it's the last link. As long as employment doesn't collapse, the recovery will continue to gain strength. As it does, slowly jobs will be added and they will be the fuel that kicks the economy into a higher gear.

You are seeing a large number of people coming out of the woodwork because there are jobs to be found. People are now looking for jobs because it is now worth looking.

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.

Even though there probably is a recovery in the pipeline, there isn't going to be any clear evidence of it by the time we get around to the next meeting.

Even though it's improving, there's still an awful lot of people who dropped out of work force and are waiting to be pulled back in.

Everything else suggests quite a lot of momentum in the economy.

At this point I am guessing that the Fed is pretty committed to raising rates in January but after that all bets are off.

Corporations may be ultra-cautious, but at least they're not slashing jobs, and that's a net positive.

It would be kind of like when they put through a substantial emergency rate cut when the market crashed in 1987. I don't think it is evidence of panic to treat what happened yesterday as an emergency. It's an emergency on many levels.

The worst is over. We're on the road to recovery.

The rise in wages of 6 cents might cause jitters, but wage inflation is less of a worry now, especially with productivity still growing at a healthy clip. As the economy slows, the unemployment rate will continue to inch up and wage pressures should ease further.

Sooner or later rates will have to come back up to at least a 'neutral' level. But for now they've got the monetary policy lever just about where they want it, and it makes sense to do as little as possible for as long as possible.

Perhaps Santa's sleigh was a bit lighter than we thought.

Santa's workshop will be operating pretty much at full capacity. There just probably won't be much elf overtime.

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.

The bottom line is, any number over 50 is encouraging. The fact that it's a little less than the consensus was expecting I don't think is that big of a deal.

This is a series that bounces around from one month to the next. There's enormous potential for particular incidents -- the weather, the timing of Easter, the release of a new movie -- to push retail sales around from one month to the next.

This is a perfect jobs report. Job growth slowed significantly and there are absolutely no signs of inflation. Greenspan may be pulling off what once seemed impossible: two soft landings in one economic expansion.

This is simply what a recession is like. This report represents real people and real pain, especially around the holidays.

A lot of people must still be sitting on the sidelines. This kind of job growth will encourage them, but I don't see it sparking a surge in wage costs. We still have a lot more room for job growth before we have to worry about venturing into dangerous inflationary territory.

There really is no inflation problem right now, and there's certainly nothing in the pipeline, with the economy as weak as it is.

There really is no inflation at the wholesale level.

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.

It reflects that people mostly still have their jobs, still have their money and people are still buying houses.

It's too early to call a turn in the trend, so Alan Greenspan can't relax completely, but it's certainly the kind of report that will help him sleep better. There's still no sign of wage inflation and we seem to be heading for a soft landing: a smooth slowdown into sustainable non-inflationary growth.

It's another in the long series of the no-news-is-good-news story about inflation.

Considering the impact of the hurricanes and record heating bills last year, the economy continues to show remarkable resilience.

It's still the same story, that there really is no inflation problem at this stage of the cycle.

It's shocking that you're looking at almost no growth anywhere else.

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

It takes something on the order of 150,000 new jobs a month to absorb the natural increase in the labor force. As long as we keep getting smaller positive numbers than that, the unemployment rate should be trending up rather than down.

The retail sales number is perhaps more important than it would look at first sight. Since we're coming so close to the Christmas shopping season when most of the retail sales of the year happen, anything that represents a gauge of consumer sentiment and consumer buying patterns is going to be latched onto by the retail industry as an important indicator.

This is kind of number that will let the Fed relax and keep cutting rates as long as they see a need.

This is consistent with the view that the U.S. economy really is on the road to recovery. Consumers are not pulling back. Consumer spending is going to get us into a second half 2001 rebound.

It's really a benign number, so no real new news.

It's reassuring. It is true that the consumer is the only part of the economy that's keeping the expansion going right now.

Any time there's a jump in one index, you start to worry about the other one. And any time one of them is tame, you tend to assume that the outlook for the other gets better.

Every time you see another indicator that they (consumers) are still spending, that's encouraging.

The Fed chairman has a lot of latitude to do things the way he wants to. I don't see why he wouldn't carry the day the way he wants to.

Inflation is a potential risk. It's not a reality yet.

If there are danger signs brewing ... that make people very, very nervous, I don't see anything that could prevent the same kind of mood (as Black Monday's) from reappearing. It's clear that you don't need a very concrete, cut-and-dried kind of trigger to make people stampede if they're in the mood to be stampeded.

If unemployment sticks at about 6.0 percent and starts coming down, the Fed will probably feel it has to start tightening fairly soon.

If you're living on the edge, then when the price of gas and heating oil goes up, you end up over the edge.

In principle, rapid productivity should make wages rise, but it seems that until the job market tightens up a bit, all the productivity gains flow to corporate profits.

If there is a danger, it is that the report isn't capturing creative and hidden ways employers are boosting wages. I'm sure Greenspan has a sneaking suspicion that these kinds of things are happening and that they may at some point provoke a burst of wage inflation.

I don't really see this as down; it's really flat. We're still at a level well above the post-Sept. 11 low; and so long as it doesn't trend downward, I'm comfortable with the idea that consumer spending is going to hang in there.

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.