A renewed surge in oil prices is likely to lead to a large headline PPI increase for January. |
A year ago, it was not that difficult to predict six months in advance where they were going to be. That's going to be harder when you are at 5 percent and you think the economy is going to be weak enough to get them to cut rates. |
At this point I would have expected more of a boost from lower oil prices. If you'd told me before the war that the military action would go as smoothly as it did and that Saddam Hussein didn't blow up his oil facilities, I would have thought oil prices would be lower. |
biggest pent-up negative wealth effect you can see in the economic data going back to 1952. |
Economic growth will be pretty strong in the first half and then slow to below trend in the second half. It seems to me that the hurdle for going beyond 5 percent is still pretty high. |
Going forward, is there still adjustment in the pipeline? I think there is. The household savings rate is low, and debt growth has accelerated. That means that consumer spending growth is going to be slow. In the next 12 months, the economy is going to do well, but it will be a temporary acceleration rather than the beginning of a normal recovery. |
High margins are an inducement to invest more aggressively. |
I'm not sure which form it will take -- maybe a lengthy period of subdued consumer spending or something more violent than that. But it's clear to me that households cannot continue to save 3 percent of their disposable income and grow debt at 10 percent per year. |
I've gone from being a data maven to a weatherman, ... Just to think that before today, I didn't know what an 'eye-wall replacement cycle' was. |
Income figures ... were surprisingly low for December given the strong gains reported for the fourth quarter on Friday and the likelihood that bonuses would have boosted December gains. |
It makes sense they would make it a little more open, just because the next meeting is still pretty far away, and when you have a new guy coming in you want to give him as much wiggle room as possible. |
It's a moderate economic headwind, ... It takes a couple of percentage points off of the GDP growth rate, but it's not the sort of oil shock that would be required for a much more significant slowdown. |
It's a moderate economic headwind. It takes a couple of percentage points off of the GDP growth rate, but it's not the sort of oil shock that would be required for a much more significant slowdown. |
It's not plausible that capital spending has been weakened by the fact that multinationals are holding their funds abroad. I just don't believe that story. |
nothing suggests that the Fed is close to a change in interest rates, in either direction. |