The economy is doing fine. We're at the lowest unemployment rates in a generation. Inflation is hard to find. There's just aren't the kinds of problems that would induce to you take new medicine. So if the medicine at the moment is a 4-3/4 percent Fed funds rate, keep it there.

Housing is backing off from its leadership role in the economy, but clearly something else is replacing it. The Fed has a little more to do and then they can rest on their oars.

In its own way, this activity of testifying before the Congress is most like being a professor. You start by giving a lecture. And then you submit, so to speak, to questions from your students. So temperamentally, I think he's very well-suited to this sort of congressional appearance.

The Federal Reserve has been for some time thinking of the economy as having two diametrically opposing influences: strength domestically and weakness overseas. There's nothing we've learned (today) that changes that view.

Once upon a time, business solved its problems by raising prices. Now, they solve their problems by cutting costs and getting better productivity. It reflects that productivity but doesn't force pricing, doesn't constrict profit margins. It's what an economy's supposed to do.

It's a matter of words that don't have much content. The fact that they've said they have a bias to tighten means nothing if meeting after meeting nothing happens.

You don't see the symptoms, and that's one of the puzzles of the moment.

This committee still seems predisposed to raising rates a bit more, and the burden is on the data to tell them otherwise.

As long as the economy is growing at such a good pace, it is appropriate and desirable that the FOMC acknowledge that with somewhat higher rates.

As a result, the swings between March and April in the Census figures tend to be smaller than the swings in the retailers' report. Chain store results from the retailers may overstate the weakness in March.