The big surprise in 1994 was that, despite all the inflation scares -- and there was tremendous inflation worry -- core inflation actually fell in 1994. |
The consensus was too exuberant coming into this quarter -- and probably is too exuberant for the balance of the year, as far as I can see. |
The continuing story is relentless global competitive pressures and widespread excess capacity. |
The earnings season continues to be a decent one, with Nokia beating ... expectations, though Ericsson missed. |
The economy was already clearly losing momentum heading into Katrina. |
The employment cost index report adds to the growing list of evidence that there is very little in the way of cost pressures in the inflation pipeline. |
The equity market is climbing a wall of worry right now. |
The Fed may remove 'measured' or 'accommodative' from the policy statement. |
The Fed seems intent on raising rates through this Katrina business on the view that the pending rebuild stimulus will trump the near-term economic loss. |
The first of the boomers turn 60 this year. They are about to retire, and they have been spending as if they were 30, for the last 30 years. |
The glue that kept the consumer market together the last few years was the wealth effect from the housing boom. |
The housing market has become so stretched that the affordability ratio for first-time buyers, the folks who drive the incremental demand in the real estate sector, has deteriorated to levels last seen in the third quarter of 1989. |
The markets are always benchmarked against expectations, |
The markets are basically not treating this as an 'if' scenario but more as a 'done deal' scenario. |
The only factors that actually prevented the first quarter from slipping into negative territory ... were the high starting point heading into it and the pre-war spending and inventory building we saw in January. As far as the second quarter is concerned, we are clearly losing momentum as we approach it. |