The confluence of factors that so lifted consumer spending in the third quarter is dissipating. Six months ago, this wouldn’t have looked like a weak number, but it will mean a substantially slower pace of...

The consumer is finally winding down. We’ve seen income growth slow somewhat, and we have enough headwinds building that we can make a strong case for spending slowing markedly.

This is the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation…and might have markets pricing in a more aggressive Fed,

We had a massive jump in the Conference Board measure of consumer sentiment last month, and everybody will be looking for confirmation of that improvement in the Michigan survey.

There is substantial post-bubble grit in the wheels right now.

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...

The euro can go pretty far — when currencies correct, they have a tendency to do that, … But I don’t see the recent move as dramatic or unexpected, and I don’t think it’s out...

The detail looks pretty solid, with new orders up, employment up. The dollar should react positively to this.

Greenspan’s perfectly fulfilled his mandate. And there are a couple of things he couldn’t have manipulated even if he’d wanted to [such as] Enron and WorldCom — these are things that the Fed can’t possibly...

You had big components down that should not be down, such as appliances, furniture and building materials. These should be stronger given the robust housing market.

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...