Bill Cheney Year Quotations

The retail sales number is perhaps more important than it would look at first sight. Since we're coming so close to the Christmas shopping season when most of the retail sales of the year happen, anything that represents a gauge of consumer sentiment and consumer buying patterns is going to be latched onto by the retail industry as an important indicator.

Many businesses see statistics showing economic growth as a cruel joke. Competition is still brutal, wages are still rising, prices are still flat or falling, and profits are as hard to find as they were a year ago.

When demand does start to rebound, the Fed will have to deal with the delayed effects of a year of aggressive monetary stimulus. Short-term rates will almost certainly have to rise faster and farther than seems credible today. Of course, this is a problem that we now feel we would enjoy facing.

There is still a big backlog to be made up before it feels like a tight job market. Clearly it's a tighter job market than it was a year ago, and if we continue to add a million jobs a quarter, we'll move in that direction. But I think it will take a little bit of time.