Anthony Chan Economy Quotations

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.

Lower energy prices will cushion the blow to the economy from the higher prices so far. Psychologically, it helps the consumer and that means the hit to the economy will not be as great as feared earlier.

Since the beginning of this year, the economy has been recovering gradually....In that environment, a gradually rising stock market would be justified. Instead we got a sharp decline. Can we justify this rally? Absolutely....But we can't justify a thousand-point increase every week.

I don't have any doubt it's going to bite. The debate is whether it'll bite enough to cause a recession, and I don't think so. Because the economy remains fairly strong, it can withstand these one-two punches. If we were growing at 1 or 2 percent and we got this same one-two punches, the ref would tell everyone to go home.

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.

Given the signs of recovery in the manufacturing sector, that won't bring the economy to its knees, but it will ensure that this will be a moderate rather than robust recovery.

Greenspan has to give reassurance that, if things deteriorate, the Fed is willing to act. But the underlying structure of the economy seems pretty good.

I think these numbers have the potential to drive the Fed to do an inter-meeting cut. The economy is slowing down, and I think we'll see more of this before it's over.

While an economy is limping during the earliest or first stage of an expansion -- this is where we are -- the ability to pass on the effects of higher input prices like energy is quite limited. But as soon as the economy begins to gain traction, more of these prices can be passed on.

Yes, the economy was slow and would have come within a hair's distance of a recession. But Sept. 11 was the fatal blow to the economy this year. That probably will be the most important market and economic event of the year.

The problem was that we had earnings growing at a high multiple of economic activity, and that wasn't right. There was a considerable amount of pressure for companies to exaggerate economic activity, but the economy was doing just fine.

We still have a labor market that's deteriorating, and today's numbers epitomize that. We're going to continue to see deterioration, which will pose serious challenges to consumer confidence and keep the economy soft for another quarter or two.

The decline in hours means the economy will be limping along once again. Every tenth of an hour lost has the same economic impact as losing 200,000 jobs.

This report supports Greenspan's rosy economic view that the economy is likely to continue to grow unabated this quarter thereby justifying continued increases in short-term rates.

This report should soothe the fears of monetary policy-makers who are trying to adjust policy to prevent the economy from overheating.

This report kind of confirms the market's fears that the economy is limping around on just one foot. At same time, I don't think this report is telling us we're moving toward a recession.

This report is certainly consistent with an economy that is trying to make a recovery, but a weak recovery. When you start to back out the volatile components, it's not all that weak. We're picking it up, but these numbers tell us the economy will come back slowly.

When the economy is creating 200,000 new jobs a month, we can tolerate $65 to $70 a barrel oil. It masks the impact on consumer confidence.

When the economy is booming and you want to hire new workers, you have to attract them with money. Today, all you have to offer is a job.

When the economy hits rough spots, gridlock is not good.

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.

Even though every investor out there is saying labor costs are picking up, companies have a way to be flexible. In theory, when the economy is doing well, profits do just fine even if labor costs increase.

As the economy gains traction, we'll have demand increasing. And if we have supply contracting, it's a deadly mix. We will end up stunting any potential recovery.

Essentially, the energy prices outlook offers almost a lose, lose scenario. Bad news for inflation if they rise and bad news for the economy if they rise too much.

There's a danger in being too positive, of there being a huge disconnect between how positive a policy-maker sounds and what the economy is doing. That was probably one of O'Neill's greatest shortfalls -- the dichotomy became too wide.

The resilient consumer and an attempt by businesses to jump-start and keep the economy going -- the combination of those two forces gave us a bounce-back in economic activity.

There's no question the recovery is taking longer than people thought. People thought the economy would pick up very quickly and that we would have a typical garden variety economic recovery. That's not the case, but the good news is it is a recovery. You can't ask for more than that.

The stock market didn't want the economy to grow too quickly because they were worried about aggressive rate hikes, ... They wanted the Goldilocks approach where everything was just right. But now they realize that maybe the porridge is a bit too cold for their taste.

This confirms fears that the economy was growing slowly, but it doesn't absolutely mean we are headed for a double-dip recession.

This is an economy coming back, but it's going to be a moderate recovery. But we should not despair, since a balanced recovery has the best chance of turning into a longer-lasting recovery.

This is actually a good report because it really tells us the economy is healthy.

Although the current growth environment is not impressive, positive growth is still positive growth. On the darker side of things, however, we must admit that the economy still lacks the growth momentum needed to correct many of the labor market ailments.

Although it's not particularly good news for the housing market, the fact that you're seeing weakness here shows that monetary policy is working and the (Fed) would not have to blunt the economy with more hikes than the market has been anticipating.

A lot of players in the economy are realizing this is a sustainable expansion. That's a factor you must have in order to support increased hiring.

There's a very good likelihood we'll see the sector come back as rebuilding takes place and the economy starts to react to the huge stimulus in the pipeline.

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.

It's a healthy development. It tells us the underlying momentum of the economy was stronger, so we can afford to take a bigger hit in the second quarter and still have respectable growth for the year.

It's unreasonable to expect that the information we have so far could justify another cut right now. We need to see more evidence the economy is headed for much slower growth in the months ahead.

Even when people thought the economy would collapse because of the hurricane, it didn't.

Everyone knows that consumers cannot carry the economy indefinitely on their own, and this report provides some hope that the long-awaited capital spending recovery may not be too far off.

It now looks as though the economy is continuing to gravitate towards a more gradual pace of economic growth.

It tells us the economy is in a sweet spot,

These numbers are essentially telling us that retail sales were artificially boosted by zero-percent financing. These numbers are not going to do anything to discourage the Fed from thinking that the balance of risk in the economy is toward weakness.

The Fed is fully aware that a slowly recovering economy needs to be nursed carefully back to health before the doctor sends the patient home.

The Federal Reserve and energy prices really have the fate of the economy in their hands.

I think a 0.2 percent decline in economic growth due Katrina's impact on oil and the regional economy is a realistic assumption,

Certainly, we see some encouragement. We see an economy that's still weak... but not falling off the cliff. The notion that we're not going to have a recession is confirmed by these numbers.

The jump in payrolls this month shows that although the economy clearly went through a wider-than-expected soft patch, it does not appear as though the shortfall in growth was permanent,

The housing market doesn't surprise me; it's been rising all along and enabled the economy to experience only a mild recession.

The encouraging stuff is they basically see the economy sort of chugging along,

You've got to ask yourself, will we have another 100-to-150 basis-point decline in mortgage rates? ... I would say that's a stretch, so it's not going to be a reliable source of funds for consumers -- we'll need to see the economy turning around.