Greenspan has had the most successful tenure in Fed history. He kept inflation under very tight control while avoiding any major recessions. |
Greenspan is coming to the end of his term and he really wants to get the interest rate increases done before he leaves. He may feel he can't afford to take a meeting off. |
I don't know whether he's going to have much input, but it would shock me if he didn't have some. He's talking to the people at the board who are writing this stuff and making sure that things look sensible -- something that he can live with. |
I don't see how we can avoid taking a hit and it will be coming right as we move into the Christmas buying season. |
I don't think he wants the markets to start thinking about the things he might change. I think he wants to take it easy at first. |
I don't think there's any cliff you suddenly walk off. I'm not going to worry about a recession until we get up to $100 a barrel. |
I have full faith in the ability of the American consumer to keep spending. |
I think the core trumps the energy prices. We know about energy prices and it's an accident about when they collect price data during the month. |
I think the hurricanes had less impact than we thought they were going to. They had a negative impact, but people were able to shift things around, and critical services came back quicker than expected. |
I think they are struggling with how to let markets know the rate hikes are coming to an end. The problem is that anything they say will get over-interpreted by financial markets. |
If you take out gas and cars, sales were basically flat. Consumers are getting more cautious. |
If you're going to buy bonds, that's the place to be. |
If you're trying to finance capital spending, you do that off saving. |
In Japan's case, back in 2003-2004, they feared the yen would drop too much in value and they intervened heavily in the currency markets. Then, Japan ceased intervening over the last year or so -- but this didn't have much of a negative impact on U.S. markets. |
It is a good time for the government to start locking in long-term rates before they go higher. Corporations are doing it, so why shouldn't the government? |