Ethan Harris
Ethan Harris
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Real estate is a topic that has vaulted to center stage, ... The real reason the topic is hot and belongs on the front page of research reports is that the housing market is becoming more of an engine of economic growth, but is also the biggest risk to future growth if the boom goes bust.
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Rubin was a great Treasury Secretary. Nobody in the Bush administration comes close.
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The national economy usually weathers these storms with relatively minor damage. Second, the hurricane is a 'supply shock' -- a disruption to productive potential -- not a 'demand shock.' The same factors that threaten growth -- higher commodity prices, shipping bottlenecks, reduced local productive capacity -- also threaten inflation.
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The one thing that companies can do quickly without laying people off is reduce the number of hours per week; as the economy slows, that's the natural place for a company to cut back. It's a little harder to pull back quickly on job hiring.
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Fed officials ... likely anticipated some fallout in fixed income markets, ... We believe ... that Fed officials wanted to signal a greater probability of tightening in 2004 than had been priced into markets.
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This is a feel-good report. When you get a strong growth number and a low inflation number, it's hard to get a better combination than that for the economy.
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This has been a fundamental problem with the Fed's whole approach to policy making, ... By changing their language so frequently, they make it impossible to figure out what they're doing.
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They're voting with their wallets and they're spending. There's always a concern that people just don't like what they're seeing, but they are still buying.
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A lot of things have to go right even to get 2.3 percent growth for the year,
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You don't want to force the new chairman to open his term by having to make a a 50 basis point rate hike.
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There's a chronic risk to the bond market from global economic recovery. Probably the most potent story is Japan.
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This large inflow is an important prop for the Treasury market, helping keep yields in their current low trading range. Not only is the inflow large relative to new Treasury supply, it may also help stabilize the market when it comes under pressure. If investors start to shy away from the U.S. market, the dollar comes under downward pressure and the Asian central banks pile in to support the U.S. market.
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This kind of adds to the sense of a rookie in the institution. They are going to have to learn the ropes for a while before they are going to be influential.
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This is why people talk about radical moves down in the dollar. They just can't see an improvement of the trade balance happening any other way.