Jan Hatzius Quotations

What they're going to be aiming for is to leave open the question of whether they hike on March 28.

While the official productivity data look impressive, alternative measures that are equally reasonable show a much more subdued picture.

Biggest pent-up negative wealth effect you can see in the economic data going back to 1952.

What matters for our well-being is the net output -- remember, depreciation charges are not available for consumption -- per person in the overall economy, not the gross output per hour worked in the non-farm business sector alone,

What will be nice, though it's unimaginable right now, is to start forecasting when they might be able to cut rates.

Going forward, is there still adjustment in the pipeline? I think there is. The household savings rate is low, and debt growth has accelerated. That means that consumer spending growth is going to be slow. In the next 12 months, the economy is going to do well, but it will be a temporary acceleration rather than the beginning of a normal recovery.

There is a more plausible explanation for the spending slowdown, namely the withdrawal of fiscal and monetary stimulus from a household sector whose finances remain stretched,

We continue to believe that the underlying drivers of productivity growth are turning less favorable,

The ratio of inventories to shipments rose a bit in the latest month. We have found movements in this ratio to be a good indicator of industrial activity. Just a straw in the wind at this point, but a possible indication of future moderation in the sector.

We do believe that the U.S. housing market is a bubble in the sense that its contribution to consumer spending is unsustainable. Households have used a large share of the recent home equity gains to supplement their spending. When these gains dry up, as they ultimately must, spending is likely to weaken substantially.

We will likely see some 'payback' for the blockbuster April report, which probably exaggerates the underlying job trend. (The latest) ISM index confirms that manufacturing employment has firmly entered contraction territory.

We are exhausting the pool of the unemployed and of otherwise available workers.

At this point I would have expected more of a boost from lower oil prices. If you'd told me before the war that the military action would go as smoothly as it did and that Saddam Hussein didn't blow up his oil facilities, I would have thought oil prices would be lower.

The September consumer confidence number on Tuesday is going to be pretty interesting. You could easily get a huge decline.

Some slippage in other categories is probably due given very strong gains in recent months.

Oil is the dog that didn't bark. It's neutral because it's not far away from the average of where it's been over the past year.

A renewed surge in oil prices is likely to lead to a large headline PPI increase for January.

A year ago, it was not that difficult to predict six months in advance where they were going to be. That's going to be harder when you are at 5 percent and you think the economy is going to be weak enough to get them to cut rates.

This is probably one of the most important jobs reports that we have had in a couple of years.

It's not plausible that capital spending has been weakened by the fact that multinationals are holding their funds abroad. I just don't believe that story.

It makes sense they would make it a little more open, just because the next meeting is still pretty far away, and when you have a new guy coming in you want to give him as much wiggle room as possible.

Economic growth will be pretty strong in the first half and then slow to below trend in the second half. It seems to me that the hurdle for going beyond 5 percent is still pretty high.

It's a moderate economic headwind. It takes a couple of percentage points off of the GDP growth rate, but it's not the sort of oil shock that would be required for a much more significant slowdown.

It's a moderate economic headwind, ... It takes a couple of percentage points off of the GDP growth rate, but it's not the sort of oil shock that would be required for a much more significant slowdown.

I've gone from being a data maven to a weatherman, ... Just to think that before today, I didn't know what an 'eye-wall replacement cycle' was.

They want to see how these first two rate increases go first. They are trying to straddle between not committing themselves to a third rate rise and not driving the stock market through the roof by saying they're done.

nothing suggests that the Fed is close to a change in interest rates, in either direction.

The message is pretty clear here: they are quite determined to keep going.

The consumer numbers are certainly more important than normal.

Income figures ... were surprisingly low for December given the strong gains reported for the fourth quarter on Friday and the likelihood that bonuses would have boosted December gains.

I'm not sure which form it will take -- maybe a lengthy period of subdued consumer spending or something more violent than that. But it's clear to me that households cannot continue to save 3 percent of their disposable income and grow debt at 10 percent per year.

High margins are an inducement to invest more aggressively.

You've got seven quarters in which the homeownership rate basically has done nothing. It's fair to say that it's stagnating.

The chairman now sounds notably more worried than previously that house prices have risen too much and that the downturn could have a severe effect on the U.S. economy.

The deterioration in housing affordability is one key reason.