Steven Wieting Growth Quotations

Many of the understandable sources of recovery have been expended in the first half of 2002, leaving growth drivers into 2003 a mystery.

Freeing up less productive resources by accomplishing more with less is the entire basis for rising living standards. It shouldn't come as a surprise that stronger periods of economic growth have generally begun during periods of high unemployment, not low unemployment.

I think energy affects us at every price. As we go marginally higher, growth forecasts get marginally weaker,

Some of the conditions that have ripened the growth outlook at the start of 2006 are unlikely to last into spring. Abnormally warm weather boosted construction activity in December. ... Judging by a 46,000 gain in construction employment in January, the winter 2006 will go down as an unusually early and strong period for building activity.

We had unintentional inventory declines in the second and third quarters, which is what you would typically get in a recession. I think companies will need to build $50 billion per quarter in inventories, even if the demand growth rate is just 3.5 percent.

We're not expecting an entirely clean read for the durable goods report. The business confidence data began to bottom at the end of June and that's encouraging. We probably will see modest gains in consumer activity and eventually the business cycle will catch up to that. But so far, everything right now is pointing to frustrating moderate economic growth for the time being,

If demand stays strong and productivity growth slows considerably, this could be a year that could be seen as heading towards traditional overheating of the labor market, with big employment gains,