Bruce Steinberg Percent Quotations

As the job market gradually improves, it should easily support consumer-spending gains of at least 3.5 percent this year.

In the first year of every recovery, inflation has fallen; and we think the core CPI will fall to 2 percent by year-end.

The economy is doing better than anyone three or four months ago thought it could do. While 1.4 percent growth is pretty feeble, it does mean the recession was, from a GDP perspective, the mildest one we ever had.

The economy is definitely making a transition. I think 1998 will be viewed as the year of soft landing when the economy went from a nearly 4 percent growth rate in the prior year, to just over 2 percent this year.

The economy was moving like a rocket in the first quarter. GDP probably rose at a 4.5 percent rate. It's a little faster than I thought earlier, primarily because even though demand was enormously strong in the first quarter, there was actually a pretty considerable case of inventory building.