Mark Vitner Came Quotations

We're just now realizing how badly off the economy was in the second quarter, ... The wider trade gap, along with the weakness we saw in the business inventory numbers that came out this week and weaker construction spending, will probably result in a second-quarter revised GDP number that will be zero or even slightly negative. It will be an eye-opening number, but it's no more worrisome than what we've seen.

There was a huge sign of relief when the number came in above 100, and that's why the market rallied, ... There was a thought that the combination of rising interest rates and higher gas prices would knock it below 100.

Back in late 2000 the Chicago PMI weakened a month ahead of the ISM survey. The weakness then also came quite unexpectedly and soon afterwards the Fed abruptly reversed course,

The problem with the November employment numbers is hiring for the holiday season. It's hard to get a gauge of what it's going to be. They do a seasonal adjustment to the number to account for that, but the seasonal adjustment causes wider swings. And this year Thanksgiving came later in the month, so hiring might have started after the November data was collected.