I don't think anyone has seen this happen so quickly. I don't think Alan Greenspan has seen it happen so quickly. So he's taking out an insurance policy for himself. My best guess is that they (The Fed) are running scared. At this point we've seen such pronounced weakness across all areas of the economy that I think they're fearful this downturn is going to be very different than any in the past.

I think the general message here is that despite the fears about a low savings rate, the consumer continues to hang in there, and that's essentially the only thing that's going to keep the economy on track.

We are not going to see the strong increases in productivity that we've become accustomed to and I think we're at that point now and that's the message in these numbers.

I think if you take those two things together, there is some hope.

This is the third decline in the last four months. Again, it's worrisome, but not surprising.

There's already a lot of stimulus in the pipeline, and there's more to come. So there appears to be an ever-growing amount of fiscal stimulus, which means any recession will be fairly shallow.

It is a genuine shocker... I don't think anyone anticipated a decline of this magnitude.

I think the Fed felt this was not the time to be cautious and conservative.

Productivity always slows as the economy slows. If labor and wage costs are still on the rise and productivity slows, either corporate profits decline or prices increase.