Steven Wieting
Steven Wieting
arguing both data literally month people prices seen shown sides stop victory
It's more of a victory lap. Literally a month ago people were arguing that prices would not stop going up. Now, data we would have killed for two years ago is seen as the end of the world. But alarmists on both sides of this thing have been shown to be wrong.
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It will be a long time until anybody thinks the economy is stretched and can't produce enough to match demand. We could be dealing with it for all of 2004, certainly.
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It takes a lot of confidence to buy cars and homes; people don't make that kind of decision on a whim.
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The fact is orders just hit a wall in June and July.
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Whether the Fed goes 25 or 50 basis points next week might mean something for managing market psychology, but it doesn't mean nearly as much for the broader economy. Their language regarding their future considerations on rates is what should matter.
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What's most important is that we've got demand and supply moving ahead fast enough that we're absorbing and creating jobs month in and month out -- that's not something to lament.
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Years from now, new benchmark revisions will come along and change the whole picture again -- which begs the question of how important these monthly payroll changes are. I think it's irresponsible to make too much of these reports.
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We're getting higher and higher oil prices each day and you'll continue to see a larger drag on the economy through the summer months.
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The fact that we can lower living costs at a time when output and income are recovering should be considered fantastic news.
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It comes down to a political choice, ... whether this is the kind of thing where you happily wait and continue unemployment insurance in the hope that certain industries bounce back cyclically, or you accept the fact that certain job categories are gone for good.
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We're not expecting an entirely clean read for the durable goods report. The business confidence data began to bottom at the end of June and that's encouraging. We probably will see modest gains in consumer activity and eventually the business cycle will catch up to that. But so far, everything right now is pointing to frustrating moderate economic growth for the time being,
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The reaction to this data in the past would have been much more positive. These days only bad news is carrying weight.
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Today's data included well-known as well as surprise areas of weakness.
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There's a lot of month-to-month volatility in these numbers, ... You had a tremendous amount of widening in February and then a snap back in March.