Bill Cheney
Bill Cheney
alan call certainly early greenspan heading help inflation relax report seem sign sleep smooth soft turn wage
It's too early to call a turn in the trend, so Alan Greenspan can't relax completely, but it's certainly the kind of report that will help him sleep better. There's still no sign of wage inflation and we seem to be heading for a soft landing: a smooth slowdown into sustainable non-inflationary growth.
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It's another in the long series of the no-news-is-good-news story about inflation.
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There must be some serious gains going on in either profits or wage rates. If it's going to profits, we should see more capital spending and hiring ahead, and if it's going to wages or lower prices, that should sustain consumption growth. Either way, it's good for the outlook.
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Considering the impact of the hurricanes and record heating bills last year, the economy continues to show remarkable resilience.
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A lot of people must still be sitting on the sidelines. This kind of job growth will encourage them, but I don't see it sparking a surge in wage costs. We still have a lot more room for job growth before we have to worry about venturing into dangerous inflationary territory.
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With today's report, the odds of a negative quarter of GDP growth have increased substantially, and the chances of a full-fledged recession just went up -- perhaps approaching 50-50. Job losses cut directly into the spending of the newly unemployed, and indirectly tend to have a very real impact on the confidence of those who are still working. If demand falls, firms will lay off more employees, and the downward spiral could put us over the edge into a bona fide recession before the Fed's actions can take effect.
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With today's report, the odds of a negative quarter of GDP (gross domestic product) growth have increased substantially.
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We're still several months away from job growth catching up with labor force growth and driving the unemployment rate back down, but that's really just a matter of time. Our economy is moving again, and once that happens it's actually quite hard to stop the forward momentum.
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We're still looking at job growth, but not enough to prevent unemployment from rising. If there were no special factors explaining this, it would be a rather dramatic piece of news.
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In principle, rapid productivity should make wages rise, but it seems that until the job market tightens up a bit, all the productivity gains flow to corporate profits.
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If there is a danger, it is that the report isn't capturing creative and hidden ways employers are boosting wages. I'm sure Greenspan has a sneaking suspicion that these kinds of things are happening and that they may at some point provoke a burst of wage inflation.
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By mid to late October, you're getting into the fourth quarter, and people are starting to look at their year-end results and deciding whether they can bail out now and still look good for the year. That's going to be as true now as it was (in 1987).
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But you have to come back to the fact that another good month is another good month. And that is good news for the economic recovery.
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If there are danger signs brewing ... that make people very, very nervous, I don't see anything that could prevent the same kind of mood (as Black Monday's) from reappearing. It's clear that you don't need a very concrete, cut-and-dried kind of trigger to make people stampede if they're in the mood to be stampeded.