[Fed policy-makers] think their job now is to play a supporting role. They kind of want to drift into the background. |
A bursting of the housing bubble could result in a severe recession. |
A recession is in the eye of the beholder, and the eye of the NBER, but clearly we're struggling here. We're at stall speed and it's not clear what, in the short term, is going to get the economy's nose up. |
All that's happening when I buy stock is that my money supply goes down, while the seller's money supply goes up, |
All that's happening when I buy stock is that my money supply goes down, while the seller's money supply goes up. |
All the data suggest the labor market is improving -- perhaps not as fast everyone would hope and want, but it's better than deteriorating. |
And rates are not likely to be adjusting downward. Households are paying about 13.75 percent of their aggregate tax income to service debt -- and it is going to go higher. |
At some point we will have equalization, where an employer will be indifferent between hiring someone in Bangalore or Chicago, |
At some point we will have equalization, where an employer will be indifferent between hiring someone in Bangalore or Chicago. |
At the intermediate and crude goods levels, we continue to see pipeline pressures toward higher inflation. Next month, I suspect we're not going to see the tobacco offset, but maybe it will be something else. |
Basically we made a lot of ill-advised investments. We need to readjust the economy, and cheap credit isn't necessarily going to be the way to do that. |
Businesses will be more inclined to pass through more of their energy cost increases to consumers because they don't view the situation as temporary. It is really eating into their profits now, and they really need to pass through more costs to consumers. |
Consumer spending is going to slow down, but it's probably going to grow somewhere in the 2.75 to 3.5 percent range for the next several quarters. |
Deflation in the context of relatively strong economic growth is not a problem, but the concern is that growth is petering out, and there's not a lot of pricing power now. |
Do you have to be reeducated? Maybe not -- maybe you just need to accept a lower wage rate, |