There can be a circular effect — if consumers lose confidence and businesses are nervous that the consumer will stop spending, and they downgrade production expectations or lay people off or stop hiring people because...

This is undeniably good news. The crucial question going forward is going to be if the rise in confidence is reflected in more spending on the part of the consumer, or if it’s simply a...

Almost always the knee-jerk reaction in the markets to positive news on reforms is yen positive. People look at reform as being a positive thing for Japan, one day, hopefully.

Markets initially seem to be focusing more on the downward revision in growth than the upward revision to the deflator.

In a typical recession, you see people…consolidate their domestic balance sheets. Instead, spending [has been] as robust as before, and that’s hurt domestic balance sheets. We’re really at a point where the consumer is squeezing...

For the past year and a half, the consumer has defied a recession and Sept. 11 and kept spending at a healthy pace.

I think a lot of gloom still exists about the size of the deficit and the market is punishing the dollar for that.

This is not a ‘ripping off the Band-Aid’ kind of situation, where you know how much the pain will be and that you’ll be fine afterwards. We don’t know how well the economy has healed....

It erodes the relative interest-rate support for the dollar.

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 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.

The trade number at best leaves the dollar where it was and at worst sparks a substantial dollar decline.

We are still seeing some slack in the labor market, in several different places.

If we’re in a situation where rates are higher because the economy’s great, the housing market is going to be last thing I’ll be worried about.

We are seeing pretty solid export growth. You are starting to see the U.S. benefit from faster growth in Asia and the rest of the world.

It’s the same meat, but with a different gravy, … The real guts of the Fed’s statement is very much unchanged.

The dollar is largely unchanged. In these holiday markets, I think releases like tomorrow’s personal income data are going to be more critical than the backward-looking GDP report.

I think it’s too soon to call for a bottom simply because history has shown us that with this currency, it’s a tough bet.

I still don’t expect a double dip [into recession], and I don’t think the consumer will turn around [and stop spending], but I do take that confidence number very seriously.

What the current deficit does is make the dollar vulnerable. It means we could see a vicious cycle, where a declining dollar makes U.S. assets less attractive to foreign investors, which weakens our assets further,...

We are definitely getting another rate cut.

The report is certainly better than in December, but it just doesn’t reflect the level of job creation we’d expect to see at this stage of the economic recovery, or the job creation the Fed...

I firmly believe consumer spending will stay in positive territory, but I think we will see further signs of consumer fatigue as the year progresses.

This shows our big reliance on imports and foreign capital. As the dollar weakens, that becomes a more and more expensive habit. It makes our imports more expensive, makes the trade deficit wider, makes us...

The weaker-than-expected housing number still leaves housing at a fairly high level of activity but will raise some eyebrows as markets worry about the (Federal Reserve) overshooting (with rate hikes).

I don’t think there’s really any doubt the housing market remains extremely robust and growing. I had expected housing to fade. Now that we’re out of recession, I don’t really know what would knock it...

As the economy gets more and more dependent on housing being the key driver of growth, the economy becomes more and more vulnerable to that sector slowing down.

What this means is that business leaders are not convinced that strong sales numbers will be maintained on or at the same level.

I don’t think there is a tremendous amount the Fed can do, but they can’t stay on the sidelines. Unless the data stream improves, they have to cut rates.

Market expectations for both are very fluid. All of this is driving Japanese yields up and causing the market to switch from the yen into the Swiss franc as the funding currency for carry trades.

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...

[Investors take the number seriously] so you have to view it as being not very good news, … But I’m not a fan of it. It’s so new, and it doesn’t seem to correlate with...

You can really think of productivity as magic fairy dust to sprinkle over growth to allow growth without inflation. That’s really the way the Fed sees it.

If we get a downside surprise in retail sales, everybody will shrug it off. We all know that April was a bad month for the economy; the markets are really geared toward May.

That’s one of the reasons the dollar came off at the end of last week, … and could come off even more on Wednesday, when Greenspan speaks. He could be setting the foundation for a...

This was an honest-to-goodness better-than-expected report. There were no special factors in it that made it look artificially strong. The report also indicates that consumer fatigue may not be as severe as we had previously...

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.