Dana Johnson
Dana Johnson
Dana Johnsonis an American writer and Associate Professor at the University of Southern California. Honors include the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, and being named a nominee for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Her writing has appeared in Callaloo, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere...
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This reminds me of the famous Sherlock Holmes mystery, where the dog that didn't bark was the key. It was what Greenspan didn't say more than what he did say that got the market excited. People were ready to hear a more upbeat reading on the economy than he gave.
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That probably overstates the impact, just think of the army of people pouring into that region, and you see people spreading out across the country and getting jobs; it won't continue, I don't think those bottlenecks and shortages will continue. The broader concern is we have crude oil over $60 a barrel, which is the price even before Katrina was named, and that will have long-term effects on the economy, and I think that's a distinction that should be made.
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Everybody's seeing the loss of the income and people are spending cautiously wherever they can.
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The reality is that many other people working in the auto industry are going to be asked to make painful adjustments, too, and a lot of people are going to say it's not worth it.
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People are awfully comfortable with the outlook for stable Fed (policy), so bonds trade with the stock market.
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The unemployment rate on a month-to-month basis bounces around quite a lot. The trend is for a small downward drifting in the unemployment rate, reflecting as much people withdrawing from the labor market as anything else.
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These are job cuts, but they're happening in a rather humane way compared to what could have occurred. They were going to happen anyway. Now those people have more of a cushion with which to make adjustments in their lives.
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There's no question the Michigan economy and Detroit metro economy have been lagging because of continued exposure to the auto sector.
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I was really encouraged to see the rebound in activity in June and July. The local economy looks much healthier this summer than it did this past spring. However, a clear up-trend is not yet in place and probably will be slow to develop given the punishing level of energy prices and the prospect of more consolidation in the auto industry.
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I think Michigan would like nothing more than to see GM emerge as a leaner and more profitable company,
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It is exciting just to be able to say you actually saw an Olympic medal up close, even touch it.
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The affordability of light vehicles has been quite stable over the past ten quarters. Family incomes have been rising faster than vehicle prices, but higher interest rates have increased the cost of financing a new car.
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With many investors drifting away early for the Thanksgiving holiday and with the fixed income markets scheduled to close early on Wednesday, the clear potential is for some erratic price action in illiquid markets,
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From a cyclical perspective, I'm not prepared to worry about inflation. There's no clear pattern of acceleration.