I’m not sure Taylor has the political savvy for the job.

If you look at the last jobless recovery, the Fed was on hold for a good, long time. When they did reverse course, the economy had produced 4 million jobs from the trough in the...

It is a genuine shocker… I don’t think anyone anticipated a decline of this magnitude.

Consider how much of a [spending] boom we had in the ’90s. The bad news is that it will take a long while to work through that. We’re looking at the first quarter of next...

I think their desired stance is to stand pat for an extended period of time rather than cut rates, unless they are confronted with an external shock to the global financial system.

I don’t think they needed an excuse to sit on their hands, and clearly they’re going to do that. They may not even move until [their] August [meeting] at the earliest. They have all the...

It’s unclear what lower rates would do. If it’s really true that productivity and structural changes are causing labor market weakness, it’s not clear that another cut in rates would be helpful to the labor...

Firms are still pretty cautious, given the experience of the past couple of years. But if firms are going to maintain market share, they will have to be competitive in terms of the goods they...

The good news is that this is going to go directly to the corporate bottom line. That’s a real plus for profits, which means a real plus for corporate spending and the recovery going forward.

Productivity always slows as the economy slows. If labor and wage costs are still on the rise and productivity slows, either corporate profits decline or prices increase.

The second half will show some better growth. Will that be sustained past the second half? For that, two things have to happen: we have to see a pickup in business spending, and the labor...

It came in a little higher than expected, but I take it as more of the same — consumers are hanging in, but they’re not showing robust enthusiasm.

He’s instantly recognizable in financial circles and has international stature.

We’re nowhere close to the Japanese example. When you have real deflation as they have in Japan, consumers expect prices to be lower, and they defer purchases, which makes the spiral worse. That’s not an...

They’d just as soon sit on the sidelines in an election year, but they will do what they have to do, and they have moved in other election seasons.

I think the Fed felt this was not the time to be cautious and conservative.

I suspect they will not have a neutral bias; they will indicate risks are on the downside. I think we will, on the production side, see better numbers in the second half of this year,...

We’ll probably have a moderate-paced recovery. I couldn’t agree more with the Greenspan’s forecasts that it would be a sub-par recovery.

There’s already a lot of stimulus in the pipeline, and there’s more to come. So there appears to be an ever-growing amount of fiscal stimulus, which means any recession will be fairly shallow.

I think the general message here is that despite the fears about a low savings rate, the consumer continues to hang in there, and that’s essentially the only thing that’s going to keep the economy...

I think you would be hard-pressed to find an economist, aside from the supply-siders, who would argue against the idea that deficits matter.

They’ve got more room to move, and they will move. That’s what they’ve always done in past recessions and what they’ll do again.

We’re seeing on an almost daily basis signs across all sectors that this recovery is for real, and this trade number is confirmation of that. We’ve seen a pick-up in imports, indicative that the economy...

Certainly those auto incentives were helpful in giving us that growth in the fourth quarter. But we have to remember that even outside of autos, the consumers have really hung in there. I don’t think...

From the Fed’s point of view we’ve had head-fakes before — I think they want to see a more stable environment for financial markets before they call it a day. I don’t expect that’s going...

It’s clear the consumer has progressively turned more cautious and conservative. Given that, and given that business capital spending has yet to come back, how long can this recovery keep on going? These numbers certainly...

There’s no case for no cut at all at this point. There have been better economic numbers, but [policy makers] expect to see that. If I interpret what they’ve been saying correctly, this economy could...

You can’t read too much into any one number, but it’s a sharp rebound from the lows of October. Given that and a few other things, the bond market’s more recent expectation is that the...

I find it strange that we had one of the biggest declines in employment in almost two years and no one noticed, and I’m sure they’re thinking the same way over there at the Fed.

I think (Fed Chairman) Alan Greenspan has made it all but official, we’ll get another rate cut in June, but my guess is a quarter point rate cut, principally because of what we’re seeing on...

We are not going to see the strong increases in productivity that we’ve become accustomed to and I think we’re at that point now and that’s the message in these numbers.

At labor market turning points, the household survey does better because it picks up self-employed workers and others not reflected in the business survey. But I’m still not convinced the labor market is quite as...

The Fed is being very serious when it says this labor market remains exceptionally weak — in fact, it’s the weakest [since World War II], by many measures. And if you look at the leading...

This liquidation has been so sharp, so severe, not just in this last quarter, but over the past year, that even with a modest pickup in demand, production is almost bound to increase as we...

I don’t think anyone has seen this happen so quickly. I don’t think Alan Greenspan has seen it happen so quickly. So he’s taking out an insurance policy for himself. My best guess is that...

Productivity growth helps keep inflation at bay and allows real incomes to grow, but it makes businesses even slower to hire than usual.

The anecdotal evidence of the beige book seems to confirm what all these economic reports have been saying.

Inventories are at rock-bottom levels — even if economic growth slows in the fourth quarter, those inventories will have to be rebuilt, otherwise businesses risk losing business.

I think if you take those two things together, there is some hope.

This is the third decline in the last four months. Again, it’s worrisome, but not surprising.

To me, the business cycle is working as it always does, absent an external shock. Inventory liquidation means firms have to increase production, and they’re already doing that. They’re also increasing the length of the...

Firms in the past year have continued to invest in equipment and technology to improve productivity. And with good reason — the cost of capital is below the cost of labor.

They’re acknowledging reality. They’re saying, ‘We’ll do what we have to do if future events warrant,’ but I still don’t think they plan on doing anything anytime soon.