And the maestro surely wielded the chairman's baton with extraordinary skill. His stellar record suggests that the only right answer to the age-old question of whether it is better to be lucky or good may be: both. |
He was confident in his judgment, and he was right. The lesson is that sometimes you can't wait for the data to be definitive. |
His flexibility, his unwillingness to get stuck in a doctrinal straitjacket that becomes dysfunctional may be his greatest strength. |
His performance as chairman of the Fed has been impressive, encompassing and overwhelmingly beneficial -- to the nation, to the institution and to the practice of monetary policy, |
His performance as chairman of the Fed has been impressive, encompassing, and overwhelmingly beneficial - to the nation, to the institution, and to the practice of monetary policy, |
I think they're right on the curve but in danger of being behind the curve. |
In the classic old business cycle, there would be a diminution in sales; it would take a little while for this information to reach corporate headquarters, ... And there would be an inventory pileup. And then - bam - businesses would react, sometimes violently, by cutting production. |
In the classic old business cycle, there would be a diminution in sales; it would take a little while for this information to reach corporate headquarters. And there would be an inventory pileup. And then - bam - businesses would react, sometimes violently, by cutting production. |
It's a worldwide shift. It started before Greenspan, it was furthered by Greenspan, and it will continue after. |
It's not a lack of transparency when you stop giving information when there is nothing to give, and we're getting pretty close to that point. |
Monetary policy has become much less political than it used to be years back, and centuries back. There's a consensus on what monetary policy should be doing, which is to say keeping inflation low and, subject to that constraint, keeping employment high. So politicians take this attitude that it's for technocrats, and it doesn't matter too much whether the guy is a Republican or a Democrat. |
Never treat only one productivity number that seriously, ... What you have to remember is that productivity has always been very cyclical. When the economy sags, productivity sags. |
One of the reasons for all the happy faces in retail this holiday shopping season is that gas prices are going down, down, down. Employment and income are doing well. |
Public opinion is presumptively an input to policy formation in a democracy because politicians respond to it or at least are believed to respond [to it]. |
The AFL-CIO sees a large stake in this disagreement that potentially goes beyond UPS workers, |