But what we've seen is if you hit the economy over the head enough times with higher energy prices and short-term interest rate hikes, it reacts.
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.
This hurricane dwarfs anything we've seen before. There are still a lot of people out there that just have not had a chance to file.
This provides a big shot in the arm to the notion that geopolitical concerns were holding back the economy. Otherwise we wouldn't have seen such a big pop. This probably exaggerates how excited consumers will be after all is said and done, but it gets the direction right.
I haven't seen increases in the workweek strong enough to augur that all of a sudden employment is going to surge, ... If I had seen that in the past couple of months, I would be more optimistic.
We're starting to see the savings rate pick up from near historic levels, which is very encouraging. Though we don't expect Fed tightening to work overnight, we are starting to see some of the early results of the significant tightening we've seen to date.
We've seen a sea change in the way the financial markets and economy watchers are looking at the world, ... For many months, people thought the economy was so strong and robust, they could ignore these head winds.
What the Fed showed was that extraordinary circumstances require an extraordinary strategy. Not only are they moving rates to lows not seen since the early '60s, they're prepared to move them a lot lower.
Several times in the last year we've seen mortgage rates creeping up and housing hasn't responded. Now the Federal Reserve has put some credibility behind the increase in rates. I think it set a general tone for the housing market that it'll be a lot more muted.
The two months of favorable data allow us to start connecting the dots. It gives us a picture of a rapidly improving labor market. I think we can categorically say we have seen a sea change in labor market environment at this time.
The movement in labor market conditions is a lot more important than the movement in energy prices. Only when labor market conditions are deteriorating have we historically seen that energy prices have an impact.