It's really picking up half of labor pay. |
It's reasonable for investors to be concerned with inflation, given six months ago we were talking about deflation. What we're seeing is the purchasing managers are telling us that the costs of some materials are going up. The question is, can it be passed on to consumers? |
It's setting up for a better performance by the consumer. |
Most of the (economic) numbers have been decent, but people just can't have a positive view on the economic trends til they can see the other side of these Middle East developments. |
My guess is there will be a bigger stimulus package in the months ahead -- more than $50 billion -- in response to frustration they can't get the economy moving faster. |
Skeptics will point to other waves of innovations in the past, but things are happening at lightning speed here. Two years ago no one knew what 'dot com' was. |
The alternative [to a stimulus package] could be worse. If the economy flounders, then there's a loss of revenue, worsening the budget situation -- it could even be worse than the measures you take in the short run to fix the economy. |
The consumer is slowing down gradually, so anybody dealing with a customer is going to find that it's a lot more competitive. |
The economic loss from the one-day demonstration may not be as big as the realization that (illegal immigrants make up) an important part of the economy. It's probably a small number only because it's a one-day event. |
The extraordinary events of the time make a person. He'll be bigger than life because of that. |
The fact that [Greenspan] is an intellectual leader will generate a lot of chatter ... The fact that the Fed chairman's highlighting it means it's got to be important. |
The labor force is very flexible. If wages go up, it may suck all these workers back in. |
the long-run budget impact, despite all the screaming and hand-wringing about this...is really very small, very modest. |
The only really new proposal in the [2003] initiative was the proposal to lower the tax on dividend income and capital gains, and it costs something like $20 billion to $25 billion a year, which is really trivial. |
The overall business-spending picture looks grim because airlines are not buying aircraft and power-generating firms are not buying turbines, ... Aside from those things, there's a broad-based acceleration going on -- spending on almost every category [of goods] except those two is looking normal. Behind the scenes, there's a normal cyclical process building. |