Robert Brusca Quotations | Page 2

It's like an old Jonathan Winters movie - 'The Russians aren't coming! The Russians aren't coming.' And they'll probably never be here.

It makes sense to take a fresh view of things, and then the market readjusts,

It's like saying we're not going to hit as hard if you fall from the 50th floor of the Empire State Building instead of the 100th floor of the Empire State Building. The question is, what floor are you going to jump from and is it really going to hurt you?

Consumers are conflicted. They feel fine for now, but they are worried about the future.

consumer prices are really going to be under control, as well.

Eventually you have other prices going down to compensate for the fact that energy went up. But that doesn't work itself out in a month or two; it works out over a period of time.

It's not good. It's a huge step back for the Fed. It's not the direction where the Fed wants to go. It's unsettling.

Everybody knows what the Fed is doing, but no one knows which move is going to impact the market. I call it a version of Federal Reserve water torture: a drop at a time and after a while it will drive you absolutely batty.

It was more than what I was looking for.

No matter which candidate you support, you have to realize there will be a lot of discord in this country, ... And no matter how much you like your candidate, you realize neither one of these guys has a magic bullet for the economy.

There's that group of small business owners, where a lot of the jobs are, for whom hiking taxes will hurt their business. They already face higher heating costs, insurance costs -- at some point, they may decide there are too many costs to run a business and decide it's not worth it any more.

This is in line with what Mr. Greenspan has been telling us, which is that we have price stability for goods. But he says he doesn't think we have price stability for services.

It's really a soft batch of numbers today. Nothing says 'recession' or severe slowdown but there is a consistent signal of softness that permeates these reports and belies some of the strength in consumer spending that we have seen early in the year.

The Fed has never said this borrowing is a mistake and that this is a problem.

The Federal Reserve, with the ink barely dry on its statement of intent to move in a measured pace, has begun a new theme that says 'measured' may be too slow.

The Federal Reserve has talked about the economy being in a soft spot -- well, it's really in a soft spot.

The consumer still has life. It does temper the overall gain, but we're still going to see the consumer spending this quarter.

Inflation seems to have weathered the storm of rising energy prices.

Inflation is very contained. It's not going anywhere. The Fed is little too worried about the wrong thing. I'm more worried about growth.

Inflation is very contained; it's not going anywhere.

Inflation is rising in more sectors than it is falling. It is doing so across horizons of one month, six months and 12 months. We are left in all this wondering what the Fed is up to and what it is waiting for.

Inflation decelerated across a broad spectrum of core CPI areas -- about 40 percent of prices in the core showed declines in their year-over-year growth rate. That's a big proportion. The Fed is concerned and has a reason to be concerned.

I have no plans to do anything with it ? probably put it in the bank. I'm not going to change my spending habits.

If you look at the Fed's own numbers,

I look at this as the closing of a window of opportunity to raise rates. If they're more aggressive, they're more likely to have an immediate effect on people's psychology. If they're too aggressive, they can undo that. If they're not aggressive enough, they can't undo that.

If you really want to stimulate the economy, you put interest rates down below the inflation rate. The lower the inflation rate goes, the harder it is to get the federal funds rate down below that.

Clearly, this is more strength in the retail sector than the Fed would like to see.

Housing may get another mini boost from the recent drop in rates. These data do lag a bit. Still, it is clear that, low rates or not, housing is not on fire the way it once was. The level of activity remains quite high for housing. But the prospects for further growth do not look that strong based on momentum.

How could we have such a turnaround in job growth and have the Fed find that it doesn't change its assessment of risks in the economy whatsoever?

I don't think inflation is that much of a concern. However, there are still a few short-term issues at hand that could challenge spending, such as the labor market. Though it had improved, it hasn't yet turned a sharp corner.

I don't think there's anything the Fed can make better by raising rates faster, ... They've gotten rates up a lot in the past year already. Inflation had accelerated because of oil but core inflation is still low and hardly anything to get excited about.

You count up the products (showing price increases) and you see there's a little more pressure just below the surface, ... The overall energy number showed a big decline. That covers up a lot of ills. But the PPI was the warning shot across the bow. With the CPI report we dodged the bullet.

You can't repeal the laws of economics. Wages in China are so cheap, that you'll never make labor cheap enough in the United States to compete with that.

These are big declines. It shows you how weak the economy is. Prices don't decline like this unless you've got slack demand conditions.

This is a little bit like getting a bigger-than-expected package in a much prettier wrapping and huge bow, but you open it up and it's exactly what you thought you were going to get.

The claims numbers always do strange things at the end of the year. There was some improvement at the turn of the year, but the story is that claims are gravitating back to the 400,000, where they were for quite while.

The consumer can pop for a spree now and then, but spending at its basic level is pressured by a negative savings rate.