If even 5 to 6 percent GDP growth isn't enough to get any net hiring, then the risks rise that the stimulus from the tax cuts and defense spending could produce a one-time boost that will fizzle out next year.

But you have to come back to the fact that another good month is another good month. And that is good news for the economic recovery.

By mid to late October, you're getting into the fourth quarter, and people are starting to look at their year-end results and deciding whether they can bail out now and still look good for the year. That's going to be as true now as it was (in 1987).

I don't really see this as down; it's really flat. We're still at a level well above the post-Sept. 11 low; and so long as it doesn't trend downward, I'm comfortable with the idea that consumer spending is going to hang in there.

If there is a danger, it is that the report isn't capturing creative and hidden ways employers are boosting wages. I'm sure Greenspan has a sneaking suspicion that these kinds of things are happening and that they may at some point provoke a burst of wage inflation.

In principle, rapid productivity should make wages rise, but it seems that until the job market tightens up a bit, all the productivity gains flow to corporate profits.

If you're living on the edge, then when the price of gas and heating oil goes up, you end up over the edge.

If unemployment sticks at about 6.0 percent and starts coming down, the Fed will probably feel it has to start tightening fairly soon.

If there are danger signs brewing ... that make people very, very nervous, I don't see anything that could prevent the same kind of mood (as Black Monday's) from reappearing. It's clear that you don't need a very concrete, cut-and-dried kind of trigger to make people stampede if they're in the mood to be stampeded.

Inflation is a potential risk. It's not a reality yet.