Stephen Stanley Quotes (57 Quotes)

The unemployment report, for once, was essentially as expected in November. The employment situation seems to have pretty much worked through the job losses associated with the hurricanes. Now, we wait for those jobs to be recovered over the next 3 to 6 months.

The economy is still growing at an above trend pace and with slack in labor and product markets all but fully absorbed, inflation pressures will begin to gradually build this year.

There's a game of chicken going on with traders wanting to go short but too afraid of month-end demand to risk it, ... Anyway, nobody wants to be short in a holiday week when anything might happen geopolitically.

When the economy's weak, there's always a potential competitor who will undercut you on price, but when everybody's doing decent business, there's not as much urgency on the pricing front. When consumers are mostly employed and their incomes are going up, they're more inclined to accept some price increases.

The Fed can not be comfortable with the pace at which the labor market is moving tothrough full employment. Let the wage acceleration begin.

The report follows the recent pattern of strong growth and no inflation.

Fed officials will remain watchful for a reacceleration in unit labor costs, especially with anecdotal evidence and an upturn in average hourly earnings growth suggesting that wage pressures may be picking up.

Productivity rises could be more modest going forward, since hours worked should grow faster as job losses caused by the hurricanes are reversed. Fed officials will remain watchful of a reacceleration in unit labor costs.

The factory sector appears to have begun the year on a solid note, no doubt bolstered by the surge in new orders seen at the end of last year.

There is more bad news to come in May. Gasoline will be up sharply, and tobacco will be up.

It is a little early to eulogize the housing sector. Look for any deterioration in starts, sales, etc., to be more gradual than the weather-depressed December starts tally would suggest.

I do not expect to see the Fed let its guard down on inflation any time soon even though the worst fears of energy pass-through have not come to pass.

The 'economy is weakening' crew will have a field day with this report. But until we see two weak numbers in a row, I am absolutely unconvinced. . . . Disappointed Definitely. Changing our big picture view No.

It is never a happy day for the Fed when GDP is revised down and inflation is revised up.

The labor market is very healthy, with both jobs and wages advancing at a nice clip. This means that households will have plenty of cash to support consumption in 2006.

The main story was oil. Volumes and prices both rose in June, so petroleum imports jumped sharply.

The consumer never really missed a beat, and now attitudes are beginning to catch up to reality. Once again, watch what they do, not what they say.

Oil is playing a positive role for stocks and the bond market today. Also, the markets are coming off a rough stretch, which makes this bounce pretty understandable.

The economy is clearly strong right now, and that's what these numbers reflect. In the short term, there's a risk people will pull back on spending, but that depends on how long gas prices stay high, and so far there's not much evidence the consumer is slowing down.

The Fed will have to take rates beyond neutral to a somewhat restrictive pace. Today's data totally supports that view of the world and should...eliminate any doubts about the near-term course of monetary policy.

If what we see in these surveys is truly the case, then there will be a clash in the boardroom as these two decide how best to move the company forward.

One-year inflation expectations spiked from 3.1 percent to 4.6 percent, by far the highest reading since 1990.

The big picture for the consumer still looks good.

The idea that the Federal Reserve is close to being done with interest rate hikes has certainly benefited the bond market, and stocks have benefited as well.

It's certainly an interesting time as we bump up against levels we haven't seen in quite some time.

However, we are reaching a point on the calendar when the data should be settling down and there is no indication that the number of new filers is poised to move back to the 310,000 to 340,000 range that prevailed in 2005 prior to the hurricanes.

The labor market appears solid heading into 2006, which could have bolstered the confidence reading in January.

The employment number will be the key for the stock market next week.

If inflation doesn't accelerate much from here, and the Fed just raises rates a little more, we might see something like the end of the 1990s again. But if the Fed has to really ramp up to fight inflation, it's going to be a much worse environment than investors realize.

We've had this pattern of strong month, weak month lately. May numbers were weaker and the expectation is for June numbers to be stronger.

This report is huge in the big picture, ... With the election over and this good news on jobs we could at last see an unleashing of animal spirits in the economy.

If it didn't happen in the first quarter, it's going to have to happen at some point. If consumer spending or investment spending was a lot weaker than expected, it'd be a lot more troublesome.

Fed officials have made clear that their heightened inflation concerns are related more to the outlook than the present situation. Thus, inflation fears have intensified even as core measures of prices have been exceedingly well behaved.

It is definitely clear that (housing) is one area where you will see less growth,

In terms of monetary policy right now, most people expect the Fed to tighten during the next two or three meetings, but it's foggy beyond that. Greenspan didn't really say much to clarify, either in his comments or in the question period. He was appropriately non-committal, and so there's been little reaction from stocks.

The big picture is still that 10-year yields are up 100 basis points (1 percentage point) in basically a month, so to see a 5- or 10-basis-point pullback is not a big deal. It's just a wiggle on the charts. You will get wiggles here and there, and whether it's driven by surprises in economic data, or in geopolitics, oil prices or stocks is anyone's guess.

We expect productivity growth to moderate, and compensation gains and unit labor costs to pick up. Just another piece of the puzzle that points toward more Fed tightening than the market currently expects.

We're in a pretty quiet time of the year. We've been pretty directionless today. Oil hasn't been doing much.

The labor market is the linchpin of our economic forecasts, because income growth is going to sustain the consumer.

The U. S. economy is simply stronger than that of most of our trading partners and modest currency movements have proven insufficient to remedy the balance.

Heading into 2006, the fundamentals for business spending in equipment and software look solid. Firms will need to invest more to meet demand.

The Fed is, if anything, more concerned about inflation than they are about a growth slowdown.

The indicators of prices ... are beginning to point more clearly toward inflation pressures.

I think the next really big number for the market is next Friday's retail sales figures. Up until Friday, investors are going to be focused on oil prices, the earnings, and to an extent, the election.

The crux of the statement was unchanged (from the last meeting). They said that policy remains accommodative, but that the central bank will respond to changes as needed. That's been the mantra since the tightening period began last June.

The bottom line is that, excluding the hurricane, to the best that we can tell, job growth continues to be good, as was made clear by the upward revisions to the previous two months.

While housing demand will probably continue to moderate from the torrid pace seen in the last few years, housing starts should remain well-supported in the coming months, as builders' backlogs remain near record levels and rebuilding along the Gulf Coast will eventually boost activity.

There is no signal that the Fed is nearing the end (of its tightening cycle), and that's been the one consistent thing.

Some of the strength in building permits and claims may be weather-related and so this number probably won't be repeated, but there's been a strong recovery in the index since the hurricanes and by and large we're seeing that in the economy as a whole.

What really got everyone's attention was the decline in the unemployment rate.