Robert Brusca Fed Quotations

Worker productivity generally creates a scenario where employees realize they can begin to demand more for what they do. While the year-over-year productivity gains are still quite good, there is some evidence that wage inflation may be starting to creep in. The Fed won't like this.

We've still got a lot of job growth, but it's not pressuring the unemployment rate, ... That's a critical thing for the Fed -- between the unemployment rate and the nice average hourly earnings rate figure, which was up only a penny, I think the Federal Reserve will breathe pretty easily with this report.

Most people were afraid that we'd start to see some inflation, but I don't think there's much here. The Fed still has its foot on brakes and will keep tapping them at regular intervals, but perhaps not as much as investors had been expecting.

But even if you have a weak number next month, even if you get zero growth, you'd be averaging about 150,000 new jobs a month (for the last six months.) So the Fed would need to see something less than zero to change its mind.

I think we're going to have a slower recovery, ... There are other things that suggest there are limits to what the Fed can do.

What we see is a Fed president trying to be honest with us.

There are rates that may not move at all and there are rates that may move opposite to what the Fed has done.

This shows the Fed rate cut was really quite needed, ... and would probably suggest the Fed might have more work to do to hold things together.

Credibility is a key here. The Fed can't go out hammering away at some of these issues and then say, 'Oh, never mind,' when one of the key dates comes. So I think that's something else that sort of forces the Fed to put its cards on the table.

Each Fed Chairman has to go through his own, on-the-job, trial by fire. There is no other way.

The rise, however, does not mean that housing is out of the woods -- far from it. The Fed is still hiking.

The sell-off in bonds is for real and is the correct reaction. The Fed will need confirmation to act. The bond market won't. It takes no prisoners.

This is a Fed that should be headquartered in Egypt, because it's in denial.

They are desperately concerned about maintaining inflation fighting credibility. So the Fed is not focused on inflation, it's focused on inflation in the future.

This is what the market did in 1974, ahead of a slowdown in 1975, and the Fed continued to hike rates in the face of marginal data turning worse, ... I don't see where the Fed sees 'traction'.

It's a surprise. Certainly the Fed is worried about inflation, but it has been subdued in recent months, so I wouldn't be too concerned about that.

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.

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

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 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.

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

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 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.