On balance, it is a modestly dollar negative set of data. Retail sales growth was a little weaker than markets had expected, with a downward revision to the ex-auto sector.

We’re seeing Japan aggressively acting to keep the yen steady against the dollar and stop the process of broad dollar weakness from turning into broad yen strength.

This was a pretty positive number, with solid increases in output of business equipment and consumer goods.

Interest rates are low, the stock market is higher, and we hear all this talk about a tax-cut package,

We had a couple of gains in the sector, but … there’s a difference between a bounce and a sustained level of gains. That’s one of the things we’re trying to find out, and it...

It’s probably wise they [cut] before the opening bell. They wouldn’t want to [be seen as] reacting to the stock market, but they are trying to show that they are willing to do what it...

I would point to the core PCE deflator, which gave a modest upside surprise, … This is the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation … and might have markets pricing in a more aggressive Fed.

[Policy makers’] concern is that we’re still only forming a bottom and that the process is still very fragile. Their concern is not for data in December and November…They’re concerned about January, February and March,...

If that’s the way the world is, then that’s fantastic, because if oil prices go down and the Iraq situation disappears, we’re off to the races again. But I think that opinion is at worst...

The markets have probably been too quick to connect the dots from the current slew of good data straight to a Fed rate hike,

I think the employment situation is getting better, slowly, so I don’t think it will cause the consumer to shut down, … But job growth like this makes consumer spending that much more fragile, if...

Without the U.S., there’s not much forward momentum in the global economy.

This is what the Federal Reserve has been warning about for a long time — we will still see consumer spending growth, but it will be more moderate than before, … It’s a retrenchment of...

People’s outlook for the economy changes much faster than the underlying state of the economy. The Fed tries to keep its eye on the larger ball and not on the ping-pong ball of the stock...

Everybody knows they (investors) want to buy high yielding currencies and the yen still seems like the best currency to sell to fund that.

Given that the economic data will be strong, people will wonder why the Fed is not moving, which could cause some volatility in the markets. But we think the Fed will remain on hold for...

This whole question of the impact on interest rates is really complicated, but a lot of smart people at the Fed and elsewhere have said it’s not really a big issue — it’s only suppressing...

The markets are trying to put this data in the context of how scared the Fed is by it. It’s very difficult to see exactly what the Fed views as a continuation of last year’s...

Probably the easiest way to think about the Sept. 11 event is to think of bouncing a ball off the roof of a garage onto the driveway. The ball’s bouncing around, and it’s still unclear...

This really puts the spotlight very acutely on the Fed minutes this afternoon.

This is a solid (GDP) release and should support the dollar’s gains from earlier this morning,

This really reduces the chance of a cyclical bounce in spending, which is what we typically expect to see in a recovery.

The data flow has turned decidedly negative.

We’ve seen markets get ahead of themselves in bonds and in currencies as well, … There are signs that markets have now gotten too optimistic about not only the size of the U.S. recovery, but...

Every time you see a number that shows prices decelerating, immediately you have to think of sluggish re-hiring, … It means companies will still be closely guarding the bottom line and will be slow to...

When we started the year, the markets were reticent to buy into either a strong U.S. economy or the Fed raising rates to 5 percent. What has changed is the market’s very stubborn resistance to...

Everybody has to learn a little more economics than they want to learn, now that we’re drawing more and more of a distinction between actual GDP and final domestic demand, which is GDP minus inventories,...

Stocks usually lead us out of a recession, but not this time. That throws in a whole new level of uncertainty about how businesses are going to behave. We don’t know if there will be...

I’m not in the ‘V-shaped’ camp. I definitely think we’re going to get recovery, [but] the trajectory of that growth is going to be really low.

There still is evidence that the most important sector of the economy, the labor market, is still only in the process of stabilizing. It’s not in full-fledged recovery yet.

I think they’ll need to see a lot of job growth, not just one month.

The manufacturing sector has been so battered that it’s too early to say the troubles are over in that sector. But we’re seeing the economy making some kind of a bounce after contracting in April....

The global perception is the U.S. has the most to lose if there’s a war in Iraq. That’s made the rest of the world averse to U.S. assets. Foreign investors are looking home again.

We may have hit bottom here, to some extent. We’re facing two quarters — the fourth of 2001 and the first of 2002 — of close to zero growth. But this may be the first...

There really has not been justification for the dollar rally to happen exclusively versus the euro, especially because euro zone data has been kind of positive and Japanese data has kind of languished in a...

If you look back at the data we had in July and August, they were not very positive. Even before Sept. 11, we weren’t seeing growth anywhere, except in housing and [automobile sales].

They could have done more to communicate well with Wall Street. The new [people] will be much more savvy, more public-relations oriented.

Look at the subcomponents — what are inventories and new orders in this case? … If I were the purchasing manager at a hospital and somebody asked me about ‘new orders,’ what would I count?...

What I call a dollar crisis is when you have a big, negative feedback loop, with international investors spooked purely because of the currency, shedding U.S. assets, which would be more dollar negative, and it...

U.S. treasury yields are rising and we’ve seen that support the dollar across the board. The dollar remains strong on the back of solid U.S. economic data and expectations that the 10-year yield is going...

Business confidence remains very, very fragile, and we’re still in an environment where businesses are more concerned with cutting costs than with ramping up investment projects,

A lot of people don’t understand that the ISM number is not actually an output number. It’s the equivalent of consumer confidence, but for businesses. So certainly outlook has improved, but it remains to be...

Even if the Fed got very concerned about these headwinds — business investment, consumer confidence, stock market frailty — they’d be asking themselves if cutting another 25 basis points [one-quarter percentage point] would do any...

Most people at the Fed seem to feel that the national economy is strong enough to absorb the effects of Katrina. That to me seems that you will not see the Fed rate hike derailed.

I see the trade gap stabilizing, but it’s hard to see it narrowing unless you get the U.S. consumer shutting down.

Certainly the economy now looks like it was in better shape in January-April than expected. But these data don’t show the economy making any improvement.

Broadly, [the ISM number] reflects what we’ve been saying for some time: We’re on the road to recovery, and we’ve seen the slowest growth behind us — but this recovery is going to proceed in...

The bin Laden tape has led to some dollar selling. The tape fits with the view of those who think the U.S. economy is at risk of falling into a sinkhole.

Europeans’ cries are falling on deaf ears, … Their wish that the euro not bear the burden of readjustment will not make it into the G7 statement.

The ‘new economy’ was a new beast to some extent, and the Fed was too lenient in terms of letting consumer exuberance get ahead of itself. They should have been moderating growth in 1997 and...