Anthony Chan Time Quotations

With sentiment under considerable short- and long-term pressure, we know that 2002 is not going to be anything like 2001 for the consumer.

To the extent that consumer sentiment reacts to movements in the unemployment rate rather than the meager increase in non-farm payrolls, we have to take this ... report as delivering good news to the troops.

There is a lot of pain, and if anything these statistics are understating the pain, ... At the same time the economy is showing some potential signs of improvement, you're not finding a lot of firms offering jobs.

I think the markets probably overreacted when the Federal Reserve first moved toward a neutral operating directive. When Alan Greenspan spoke this time, I think the reality set in and that is, yes, the central bank has a neutral directive, but it's more like an ultra-right (hawkish) form of neutral directive. ... Any time they get an excuse to raise rates, they're going to take it.

These claims numbers confirm the notion that things may improve sometime in the future. The fact that we didn't go over 400,000 was very encouraging.

These numbers confirm the notion that consumer spending, which has been so resilient, is under some threat. With investor sentiment so weak and the labor market continuing to deteriorate, consumer confidence had only one way to go -- lower.

The unemployment number is the one Main Street looks at. This buys the Fed a little more time and allows it to hold true to its word that, until geopolitical risk lifted, no stimulus should be added to economy.

Anything that causes people to spend more time thinking about what they do will clearly have an impact on productivity. The good news is this is not a permanent situation -- these things have a way of clearing themselves up. But will it be completely inconsequential? I don't think so.

What's different this time is that there is a lot more stimulus now than any time in the past 50 or 60 years. I've never seen a period with so much help from both the fiscal and monetary side.

They (Fed policy makers) know at any point of the time they may need to administer CPR to this economy.

It really tells us the economy is healthy, and at the same time we don't see that labor markets are overheating at an accelerating pace.

You typically see, from the trough of a recession to the time when the recession ends, a 1.3-percent gain in payrolls, ... From when the recession likely ended, in December of last year, we've had 0.004 percent gain, instead of that 1.3 percent gain. There's a pent-up demand for labor, given such a jobless recovery.

There doesn't seem to be any real urgency for firms to start hiring, precisely at a time we're seeing a reemergence of people becoming interested in looking for a job, ... Put the two together, and you have a formula for higher unemployment.

Any time you have a situation like this it creates opportunities for companies to clean up their attics, and that means lowering estimates and partly, or completely, attributing it to Katrina.