“It's a very confused report (and) the message is still ambiguous. This could be the beginning of something substantial, but it's hard to accept a number like that at face value. We'll need more numbers to digest.”
“He's treading on very thin ice. When the Fed chairman says that the stock market is very expensive, the average investors is not going to be pleased.”
“There is this simplistic notion around that because the yield curve is inverted, therefore, economic growth is going to slow down, but ... no consideration is given as to why the economy would slow down.”
“People will be coming back from vacation and need to catch up with whatever's going on and they're going to be doing that right in front of the economic report on Friday, so none of that suggests that there should be any urgency to doing anything.”
“There will be just too much risk of geopolitical shocks in 2006 for oil prices to fall sharply and insufficient inventory to really take the props out from underneath oil prices.”
“The Fed is not going to be troubled by a small miss (in the CPI). I don't think it's that big an issue, ... They're concerned that a falling stock market could hurt consumers sufficiently to curtail spending. That could be a problem.”
“This is a very strong report, ... The economy clearly is growing too strong and it's not going to stop on a dime, which is not very convenient to suit the Fed's needs and to meet the stock market's needs.”
“Inflation, on the surface, does not appear to be a concern, but it's obvious that prices for some items are rising, ... It's inevitable that when people are armed with fatter paychecks and when companies are spending more to produce goods and services, prices are going to rise.”
