Mr. Greenspan clearly wants to leave the door open to lower rates, but he was more explicit this time in his acknowledgement that there are risks on the other side. |
Mr. Greenspan has all but ruled out a May tightening. |
Mr. Greenspan is at least partly to blame for the turnaround in the fiscal position here -- his musings on the problems of ever-increasing surpluses were a clear green light to Congress to cut taxes. |
Mr. Greenspan is set to continue the unloosening, the risks of which are 'outweighed' by the benefits, and he'll go faster if he has to, |
Mr. Greenspan is set to continue the unloosening, the risks of which are 'outweighed' by the benefits, and he'll go faster if he has to. |
Mr. Greenspan said next to nothing about the current economic situation in his testimony, ... does not sound to us like a signal he has changed his mind on the appropriateness of the current level of interest rates. The rest of the testimony was a clear and unambiguous plea to Congress not to abandon fiscal discipline. |
My guess is it won't be very exciting because he already told us three weeks ago what he thinks. He's certainly not going to say anything that suggests the Fed might be thinking about not cutting rates as soon as the market thinks but I don't think he'll want to give the impression that they're going to slash rates even more aggressively. |
My guess is that is that at the moment these numbers seem to be supporting the slow down story, ... But the market is pretty much ignoring it and moving on. |
Next month, payrolls will plunge. |
Next month, payrolls will plunge. Our guess is negative 500,000. |
No doubt bears will highlight the rise in continuing claims, up another 29,000, but we are unmoved: A rising ratio of continuing to initial claims signals accelerating productivity growth, not a shaky recovery, ... Labor market conditions are improving -- but we still expect a soft payroll report Friday. |
No doubt these numbers will be taken by the market as a clear sign of a softening housing market and, by implication, an indication that higher interest rates are biting. We are much more skeptical: housing starts lag home sales, which have been depressed in recent months more by lack of inventory than by higher interest rates. |
No more easing [is] needed here. |
Nominal spending was held down by a 0.4% energy-induced plunge in the PCE deflator, so real spending rose a hefty 0.7%. A rebound in auto sales after the awful October was largely responsible for this. |
Not pretty, and getting worse. |