Natural gas is definitely a problem. If we have a mild to normal winter, we are OK. But if we have a colder winter than normal, we just don’t have enough natural gas.

Because they’ve got the employment, the people go there. It’s a virtuous circle. It works in the right direction.

Consumers are getting more cautious.

It’s Newton’s law of currency: Any overvaluation will be followed by undervaluation.

To me the point for the administration in this pick is getting this over with quickly.

The economy is living with it, and corporations are turning in strong profits despite high energy costs. People forget that energy isn’t as big a part of the economy as it was 25 years ago.

The geopolitical tensions are affecting people. They’re not happy with Washington and when they’re not happy about Washington, it ends up making them not happy about the economy.

GM is the story of U.S. auto manufacturing, and it’s the story of U.S. manufacturing that we are importing more and more of what we consume. Manufacturing is becoming a smaller and smaller part of...

We’re now looking at a 3 percent first quarter on top of that 1.4 percent fourth quarter. We’ve been the optimists, and I haven’t been optimistic enough.

Fundamentally, money you spend at the gas pump is money you don’t have to spend at the mall.

They have to accumulate dollars to keep the yuan down relative to the dollar. But since China has moved to peg the yuan to a market basket of currencies, instead of just the dollar, it’s...

This may mean less change in the Fed statement on Tuesday, and increases the chances of a rate hike in March.

Come hell or high water, Mr. Greenspan is going to keep tightening until he leaves. He has already proven that high water won’t stop him.

Somebody was going to have to slow the (U.S.) economy down and Asia is now doing the Fed’s work for it.

The data show that Americans are ill-prepared for retirement, and gained virtually no ground over these three years. The low saving rate and weaker returns in the stock market held back wealth, despite strong gains...

I think the hurricanes had less impact than we thought they were going to. They had a negative impact, but people were able to shift things around, and critical services came back quicker than expected.

When oil prices are pushed higher by demand rather than supply shortfall, people have time to adjust. We just keep on trucking.

I don’t think there’s any cliff you suddenly walk off. I’m not going to worry about a recession until we get up to $100 a barrel.

The problem is natural gas, and how bad that is depends on how bad the winter is going to be and it’s not starting off well. It’s cold.

Greenspan has had the most successful tenure in Fed history. He kept inflation under very tight control while avoiding any major recessions.

These are generally very good numbers and another sign that the Fed is going to be raising interest rates sooner rather than later.

If you’re going to buy bonds, that’s the place to be.

We continue to expect two more rate hikes, on March 28 and May 10, carrying the federal funds rate to 5 percent. However, any rise in inflation or acceleration in growth could send the funds...

If you take out gas and cars, sales were basically flat. Consumers are getting more cautious.

My guess is things will cool abruptly; the question is do they do it by June 29.

The second quarter is shaping up to be stronger than expected.

It was one of the worst days in U.S. financial history, and he dealt with the repercussions very well.

Your next European vacation is going to cost a lot more, and you’re going to see lot more European tourists running around New York.

We did see a bit of acceleration in wages. We were up 0.4 percent in January. That may be good news for the workers, but it is something that is going to make the Federal...

Your guess on where oil prices are going to go is as good as mine. It just depends on the Middle East and who knows what is going to happen there.

They like inflation where it is now. But they’re worried that it’s creeping up.

It is rather encouraging that the Fed is pointing toward a pause after the May hike. A lot of us were getting concerned that the hikes would continue into June and August. And one of...

People see energy prices going up and they get a little worried about what they can afford to spend money on.

I don’t know whether he’s going to have much input, but it would shock me if he didn’t have some. He’s talking to the people at the board who are writing this stuff and making...

The times they are a-changing.

We have a real savings shortfall.

That’s what people say but probably not what they do.

We expect the stock market to have another mild gain, sort of like it did in 2005. We’re looking for the market to up about 6% by the end of the year.

There is still no inflation out there.

The only inflation out there is energy.

We had expected to see a bigger rebound. On the other hand, some of the pain is lifted by the fact that they did revise up both November and December, so things are still looking...

Consumers are spending their little hearts out. We are doing pretty darn good.

We can’t run econometric models. The numbers aren’t good enough.

The real question is not what he does, but what he says.

We’re expecting oil prices to continue to come down. They’re now about $60. We expect to be down around $50 by the end of the year.

We don’t seem to be having any trouble financing our large and growing trade deficits.

Back when the program was created, elderly people were dying because they had nothing to eat and no health care. Social Security has been incredibly successful at virtually eliminating poverty among the elderly.

In Japan’s case, back in 2003-2004, they feared the yen would drop too much in value and they intervened heavily in the currency markets. Then, Japan ceased intervening over the last year or so —...

I think the core trumps the energy prices. We know about energy prices and it’s an accident about when they collect price data during the month.

There is just no spare refining capacity around to deal with these losses. We don’t have any cushion.