Steven Wieting
Steven Wieting
confidence coverage effect emotional hurricane impact katrina low month news seeing september short spending television wake
Seeing a two-year low in confidence in the wake of Hurricane Katrina isn't that surprising. The news in the month of September has been terrible. The television coverage and the emotional impact of the story has a big effect on confidence in the short run. But spending has been inconsistent with these confidence numbers.
data december difficult economic financial markets month raising rates winter
Year-end financial markets can be difficult, and winter economic data is difficult to read. It makes more sense that December will be month they skip. You don't want to be raising rates into what can be an illiquid market.
amount month september tremendous weather
September was a month where we thought there was a tremendous amount of weather impact,
broken exports flat month running second trade
Exports were flat for a second month running and that has been what is most broken in the trade picture.
data fed markets month unlikely worry
It's very unlikely for Fed to worry about month to month data changes, or even two months, as the markets do.
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.
ahead creating demand fast jobs month moving supply
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.
data economic guide month noted poor single time
He has time over time noted a single month of economic data is a poor guide to the future,
estimates ugly
Estimates have to come down. We're in for an ugly preannouncement season.
coming energy headline high inflation slow
Even if energy hangs out at these historically high levels, headline inflation should slow down in the coming year.
beneath demand faster moving production rate
Beneath the surface, production and inventory, here and abroad, are moving up faster than the rate of demand growth,
benchmark case forecasts january underlying
Benchmark revisions could completely recast underlying data, in which case January forecasts won't be useful.
business decisions flat government growing near neither nor quarter spending term third weak
Consumption is growing, government outlays are growing and the third quarter will look very strong. But going forward, business spending is flat and decisions are being deferred. That can keep us weak for the near term -- neither contracting nor expanding.
everywhere fact improvement notion spending tech
This notion that there's just too much tech everywhere contrasts with the fact that there's actually been a spending improvement,