Diane Swonk Strong Quotations

It's all vehicle sales and gas. Chain-store sales were relatively strong during the month, suggesting consumers diverted their vehicle spending to other sectors. We also had a cold snap which prompted early spending on winter wear.

We've got this sort of house of cards. It is either a strong house of cards or the whole thing could implode on us. It could go either way.

We've got the strongest overall profit performance in 30 years, and these are real profits, not the fake ones we saw in the late 1990s.

Like what the Fed has suggested, the U.S. economy was more than strong enough to absorb the blows of Katrina. The labor market is still pretty resilient.

I think you have to take the January numbers with a bit of a grain of salt. Consumer confidence is still quite strong and I think we'll see at least a partial recovery in activity in February and through the spring.