It’s hard to say whether a company like Home Depot would be better off with a falling unemployment rate and rising interest rates or vice versa,

I don’t see anything in the speech that is relevant to the near-term outlook.

The bond market took this report as a sign that core inflation may be bottoming and the Fed may still be in the tightening business later this year,

The market will look at the (consumer confidence) report with the expectation that confidence will still wobble with sky-high levels of gasoline prices and higher natural gas prices for heating homes in the winter, figuring...

Bond prices rose because the market was excited at the idea that the number of further rate hikes needed would not necessarily be large. The market is thinking that the Fed has two more rate...

It takes pressure off the Fed to hike interest rates more dramatically [than a quarter point] in August or put together a more forcefully worded statement next week [at its monetary policy meeting],

It was one of the biggest surprises that I’ve seen in some time.

Clearly Greenspan’s luster has dimmed, and there’s this worry that he’s fired a lot of bullets and the bullets he has left won’t do any good.

It’s a dismal report. Unnerving. Is this the beginning of a one-two-three punch?

We’re not talking about large sums of money. It is ironically only worth a couple of dollars to the Social Security check of the average American. They may be able to knock back a cold...

That, combined with no job growth, makes it harder and harder for the Fed to pull the trigger in an election year.

I lean toward a half point instead of a quarter. The Fed wants to shore up confidence, to show that, unlike the European Central Bank, it feels your pain.

The report is probably a shade on the weak side and it increases the chance that the Fed is more likely to stop raising rates at 4.75 percent at the middle of the year, rather...

The Fed might skip (raising rates in) September — but you have to remember that how the world looks today and how it looks on September 20 could be a lot different — a lot...

[Yet while sentiments are that small-caps will rise as long as large-caps remain strong, some on Wall Street believe the bull market has a limited outlook for the near term.] Let me put it this...

Ten years from now, they might both become first-tier numbers. But I doubt it.

You got a favorable surprise on the CPI. We had the first decline in the core rate in 21 years. It just reminds the Fed, which said last week that the risks of inflation and...

The increase in orders is particularly welcome. The bond market may like the fact that the prices paid component dropped 11 points, reversing most of the big gain in November. Analysts are banking on strength...

One cannot deny that Katrina ironically may have had a positive effect on this index because of the big surge in orders.

On the inflation front, the Fed got a little more breathing room in that the year-over-year change in the core PCE price index fell from 1.9 percent to 1.8 percent.

These are the kinds of things that raise eyebrows at the Fed. The implication that this January report has for wage inflation is bothersome to the market and the Fed.

The problem in this report for the bond market is the big increase in hourly earnings and the decline in the unemployment rate.

The important thing is not whether the Fed can ease but the fact that people can even ask that question and some intelligent people say if the Fed raises rates in September, it would be...

Even though the PPI has accelerated, it hasn’t passed over to consumer goods prices, and it hasn’t passed through into wage gains,

The first quarter is off to a very strong start. This will dominate some of the disappointing numbers we got earlier this week, at least in terms of forecasting GDP. On the inflation front, the...

The economy hit a brick wall in February and March. The risk of a recession is higher now than I thought it would have been six months ago. It’s higher now than I thought it...

This is fairly strong stuff from the Fed. They are worried about the size of Treasury deficits and how that contributes to higher rates down the road.

Unit labor costs were up 3.5 percent which, if sustained, would suggest increased labor cost pressures down the road.

I wouldn’t make a lot out of those figures.

On the prices paid index, you’re down 50 points from the highs in October, which the bond market clearly likes.

But I would not treat it as a sign that consumer spending is falling apart and that we will have a weak first half of the year.

Yet another survey of the economy is suggesting sustainable strength. Rates backed up a little because of this report, but you’re treading water a bit because of payrolls data lurking on Friday.

But … the trend in unit labor costs is still declining and I would argue that the market and the Fed will say that this is a one-time surge.

Companies aren’t afraid of being left in the dust; they’re afraid that if they go first they’ll be eaten by sharks, … Everybody is standing in front of the turnstile, and nobody wants to go...

Economists have to worry that if consumer sentiment remains depressed, spending could follow that down and you could have a much weaker outcome (in terms of economic growth.

This is one of the days when nobody is really going to care because the employment report was definitely weak.

The bond market is treating the drop in the unemployment rate and the increase in hourly earnings as two reasons why the Fed will have to hike rates.

The bond market doesn’t really care about the payrolls data now because you’re even getting the crazy question asked about whether the Fed can ease.

If your period of turbulence is less than two or three months, … then we can probably avoid a downturn.

The PPI number had some pipeline pressure underneath the surface, but the market liked the fact that the core rate was up only 0.1 percent,

There isn’t much excitement in the July factory orders numbers. July is payback for a pretty good June and May but any way you slice it, your third-quarter capital spending slowed down quite a bit...

It’s an impressive number. It just gives you more confidence that you’ll get 4.0 percent plus (increases) in the fourth quarter and you’ll hang in there through the first.

It’s certainly an impressive number, it’s the lowest since early 2001.

A Fed move in late summer is a high probability bet right now.