It's unclear what lower rates would do. If it's really true that productivity and structural changes are causing labor market weakness, it's not clear that another cut in rates would be helpful to the labor market. |
No one should take seriously the notion that he could have explicitly aimed at capping the wealth of the public, and there would have been hell to pay had he attempted to do so. |
Obviously they are above expectations, and also obviously not consistent with an economy that's on the brink of recession. In a way it's more of the same. We've known anecdotally that there is weakness in manufacturing for some time. This report reiterated that point. |
Productivity always slows as the economy slows. If labor and wage costs are still on the rise and productivity slows, either corporate profits decline or prices increase. |
Productivity growth helps keep inflation at bay and allows real incomes to grow, but it makes businesses even slower to hire than usual. |
The anecdotal evidence of the beige book seems to confirm what all these economic reports have been saying. |
The difference will be perceptible. This is a fairly unusual move by the BLS. You're probably talking no more than $75 a year. You're not going to put it in a Swiss bank account. |
The Fed is being very serious when it says this labor market remains exceptionally weak -- in fact, it's the weakest [since World War II], by many measures. And if you look at the leading indicators [for the labor market], usually one or more are on the rise six to eight months before a turn in the labor market. Right now, none are on the rise. |
The Fed's number one concern is the lack of any meaningful job creation in this recovery. |
The good news is that this is going to go directly to the corporate bottom line. That's a real plus for profits, which means a real plus for corporate spending and the recovery going forward. |
The second half will show some better growth. Will that be sustained past the second half? For that, two things have to happen: we have to see a pickup in business spending, and the labor market has to stabilize and improve, creating permanent employment. We don't expect to see that until year-end. |
There's already a lot of stimulus in the pipeline, and there's more to come. So there appears to be an ever-growing amount of fiscal stimulus, which means any recession will be fairly shallow. |
There's no case for no cut at all at this point. There have been better economic numbers, but [policy makers] expect to see that. If I interpret what they've been saying correctly, this economy could grow 4.5 or 5 percent for a year without putting upward pressure on inflation. |
They'd just as soon sit on the sidelines in an election year, but they will do what they have to do, and they have moved in other election seasons. |
They're acknowledging reality. They're saying, 'We'll do what we have to do if future events warrant,' but I still don't think they plan on doing anything anytime soon. |