Anthony Chan High Quotations

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.

If you have productivity growing faster than the economy, how can you expect demand for labor to be all that strong? I'm still hopeful that unemployment won't go much higher than 6.2 percent or 6.3 percent, but where we'll peak is not as important as when we turn around. If we sort of linger at 6.2 percent, that will put some downward pressure on consumer spending.

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Saying that higher oil prices have not increased the risk of recession or serious economic slowdown is clearly not the same thing as saying that they have not had an impact.

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.

When you listen to Greenspan's speech, you hear a fear about the sustainability of economic growth and no inflation pressures. Guess what that spells? Lower interest rates and postponing a return to higher rates, to insure the sustainability of growth.

He's saying so far there is sufficient flexibility that we can tolerate a higher deficit than we could 10 years ago. He didn't say ignore it.

This report was very encouraging. It gives us stronger employment growth than the market was expecting while none of negative side effects of economic growth are present, such as higher inflationary pressure from wages.

The good news is that if so many people are entering the labor force it must mean that they are perceiving an improvement in the economy's prospects, ... The bad news, however, is that if too many people become optimistic about their job prospects, then the unemployment rate will continue to push higher. And the higher unemployment rate does have a damaging impact on consumers. They see it and they think, 'I shouldn't be spending money.' That's one of reason the unemployment rate is so important. It's the one that drives what happens on main street.

While weather played a role in soft apparel sales, the high energy prices impacted overall sales. Net-net, the climate is likely to get better with improvements in the labor market.

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.

Our own studies have shown that consumers tend to switch over to non-store outlets in times of higher energy costs .

The impact of higher energy prices is starting to bite corporate America. It's either going to raise costs or lower demand.

The Fed will raise rates, but they're aware that higher energy prices might do some of their job. And inflation is not so high that they need to panic.

The consumer credit-to-disposable income ratio is much higher than it was in the '50s, so you can't argue that there is as much excess capacity on the borrowing side as there was in the '50s,

I think they feel the inflation risks are inching higher, but I don't think they're inching so much higher to suggest we have a serious problem at hand,

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.

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.

As the equity markets react positively to this change, we get a bit of a positive wealth effect which in turn should induce higher consumer spending.

When we exclude the effects of the recent hurricanes, we have to come away with the conclusion that despite higher energy prices and a battery of hurricanes, the job market is not doing all that bad.

I think this is the best of all possible worlds for the Fed. They'd like to see the economic expansion sustained without the side effect of higher inflationary pressure from wages.

There's no question these higher mortgage rates will take some of the shine off the resiliency in the housing market,

Higher mortgage rates are having the expected impact on the housing market.

With this figure, markets can remain all but assured that the Fed will continue to push short term rates higher well into 2006.