If low interest rates mean [Thursday's ISM] reading can be sustained, then the economy appears set for takeoff, |
If real spending rises at this pace in February and March, consumer spending will rise just 2.3 percent for the quarter, the softest since Q2 1997, |
If real spending rises at this pace in February and March, consumer spending will rise just 2.3 percent for the quarter, the softest since Q2 1997. |
If sharply higher interest rates, and a plunging Nasdaq make people more optimistic, we are at a loss to know what it will take to depress confidence, |
If these declines were part of the normal economic cycle we would now call for a recession in the U.S., but they aren't. The index is responding to a shock, and we expect it quickly to rebound. |
If this continues, it can do real damage to core inflation, making it all the more important that the Fed succeeds in slowing the economy to ease inflation pressure. |
If this is sustained we can be more hopeful the trade deficit will not rise further, |
If this trend [in jobless claims] continues, September payrolls will surely fall outright, and the bizarre drop in the unemployment rate in August will reverse. |
If we had any faith in the reliability of these numbers, we'd have to call them disappointing, ... But we don't, so we won't. |
Ignore the ISM at your peril, ... Assuming this report is not a fluke - everything we look at suggests it is very real - it is consistent with year-over-year GDP growth accelerating to 4 percent by the summer. |
In any event, a single durable good report will have little effect on the Fed. |
In the short-term, these data will reinforce the impression that the housing market is proving resilient in the face of higher mortgage rates, ... it will not last, because the current trend in home sales is not high enough to support this rate of house building in the medium-term. |
Inventories remain very low and will add to third quarter and fourth quarter growth, too. |
It is beginning to look as though there has been a real improvement in the labor market at the start of this year. |
It is disappointing in the wake of the huge rise in the Empire State survey -- the indexes are usually at similar levels, |