Mark Vitner
Mark Vitner
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The federal government is going to spend whatever they need to, to make some visible progress before next year's mid-term elections, ... And what that's going to do to an economy that's already at full employment is drive up the cost of cement, drive up the cost of steel, drive up the cost of labor.
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The recent weakness in wage and salary growth is bad news for retailers, since wages and salaries, which account for more than 56 percent of personal income, tend to influence spending decisions far more than other income sources.
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The more important figure (than confidence) for the economy is what consumers actually do. Consumers are not sitting on their wallets just yet. But that is about the only bright spot in this morning's report. With consumers concerned about both their stock portfolios and employment prospects, spending will likely rise a little less rapidly this fall.
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We're shifting from an economy driven by consumer spending and home building to one driven by business investment.
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The No. 1 reason new orders and production are falling is that inventories have risen in recent months as consumer spending has slowed, ... Such a buildup was acceptable when economic growth was accelerating. Now that growth is cooling off, businesses will need to curb stockpiles.
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In the end, we can work this out. It is $200 billion in spending for a $12 trillion economy, ... It's just a matter of how we finance it, not whether or not we can afford to do it.
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I think spending will be pretty solid the rest of the year. The August numbers will be important due to back-to-school sales.
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Inflation at the end of the day is headed higher, it's just not going to happen that dramatically this year.
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it's somewhat surprising how resilient the economy has been, despite higher energy prices.
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The biggest mistake of economists over the past 20 years ... We've consistently underestimated growth.
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They would like to raise rates, but right now, keeping rates a little too low would cause the least harm in the economy. If they raise rates after this weak employment report, people will be hollering. George Bush would be hollering the loudest.
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The federal response has been much larger than we thought it would be, ... And the money is being spent much more quickly.
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(The Fed) would rather see slower economic growth over the next two years than the return of stagflation three or four years down the road. And I think they'll do everything they have to make sure we don't have stagflation.
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The Fed will probably cut rates in both August and October by 25 basis points (a quarter-percentage point) each. We really don't know what they will do beyond that.