Robert Brusca
Robert Brusca
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We've still got a lot of job growth, but it's not pressuring the unemployment rate, ... That's a critical thing for the Fed -- between the unemployment rate and the nice average hourly earnings rate figure, which was up only a penny, I think the Federal Reserve will breathe pretty easily with this report.
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There is a reason for stock markets to be worried. But I don't think we need to talk about recession yet -- it's not on the radar screen.
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We're getting sort-of mixed results with what is happening in the economy.
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We're getting some very good spending going into the first quarter. It's interesting that while there is spending optimism, consumers are still clearly divided into two main categories -- those with lots of money and those that are hurting. That's why these monthly results have shown so much irregularity.
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Worker productivity generally creates a scenario where employees realize they can begin to demand more for what they do. While the year-over-year productivity gains are still quite good, there is some evidence that wage inflation may be starting to creep in. The Fed won't like this.
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We're still seeing job cuts in manufacturing, and it's going to stay that way for some time.
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The conundrum is the Fed, and why the it keeps raising rates.
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The fact that food sales outperformed other product categories last month is part of what's going on with the economy and its impact on consumers, ... Also, there was a time when Wal-Mart was eating everyone's lunch. Other stores have been getting their act together and they've reduced the growth gap between them and Wal-Mart.
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What we see is a Fed president trying to be honest with us.
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There are other real issues we need to look into before we begin posing solutions to problems that don't exist.
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You don't need an economist to tell you how disastrous they look.
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A lot of the main components are still showing weakness. We still have orders declining, and order backlogs haven't built up to any particular degree. This is the picture of a still-weak manufacturing sector.
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Back before the recession, we had strong job growth and no inflation. There's fuzzy thinking going on here -- I thought we'd broken the old idea that strong growth is bad. As long as productivity growth can remain high, fast job growth is not a problem.
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That mucked up trade flows, affected our economy and brought an unexpected easing by the Fed. I wouldn't downplay the risks out of China.