Mark Vitner
Mark Vitner
consumers
It is important to look at what consumers are doing, not what they are saying,
consumers economy-and-economics fairly holiday season worried
Consumers are fairly worried about the economy. ... I think the holiday season is going to be ho-hum,
both bright concerned consumers economy employment figure less likely rapidly rise sitting spending spot stock
The more important figure (than confidence) for the economy is what consumers actually do. Consumers are not sitting on their wallets just yet. But that is about the only bright spot in this morning's report. With consumers concerned about both their stock portfolios and employment prospects, spending will likely rise a little less rapidly this fall.
beer cars consumers core dollars fewer gasoline helping higher left money move net order prices result seems spent
While it seems counterintuitive, higher gasoline prices are actually helping restrain core inflation, ... With more money being spent for gasoline, consumers have fewer dollars left for discretionary purchases. The net result is that firms are slashing prices on everything from cars to beer in order to move product.
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It (consumer sentiment) was a little higher than expected, but the stock market has come back, gasoline prices have come down, and the weather has been beautiful and that has to affect consumers somewhat.
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High gasoline prices gradually eat away at income. The effect isn't felt all at once. We have seen consumers change their behavior in recent months and there should be further changes if prices stay at these levels.
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The leadership in the economy is going to shift from housing and consumers to businesses. There's nothing unusual about that. It's healthy.
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We're going to have plenty of weak economic reports over the coming months. If they respond to every one, they'll get down to zero percent interest rates pretty damn quick.
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We're just now realizing how badly off the economy was in the second quarter, ... The wider trade gap, along with the weakness we saw in the business inventory numbers that came out this week and weaker construction spending, will probably result in a second-quarter revised GDP number that will be zero or even slightly negative. It will be an eye-opening number, but it's no more worrisome than what we've seen.
both created jobs quality quantity seeing
We're seeing both the quantity and quality of the jobs being created improving.
fed funds higher knows manual neutral operating rate says
There is no operating manual that says what a neutral fed funds rate is, but the Fed knows that it's higher than 3 percent,
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The problem with the November employment numbers is hiring for the holiday season. It's hard to get a gauge of what it's going to be. They do a seasonal adjustment to the number to account for that, but the seasonal adjustment causes wider swings. And this year Thanksgiving came later in the month, so hiring might have started after the November data was collected.
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Overall this year the economy moved past the bursting of the stock market bubble. Tech companies finally started growing again and that's really benefited the Triangle.
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Overall supply and demand are moving into much better balance. With that, we're likely to see far less price appreciation than we saw in 2005.