Maria Ramirez Quotations

The price of oil is going to be the overwhelming factor in how concerned people are about the economy in the short term and about the strength of consumer spending.

I think the Fed feels very comfortable about economic growth and don't seem too shy about a tightening a bit longer.

I think that the bottom line is that for people thinking that the economy is slowing down, that is certainly not the case,

I think that merging the resources of the two certainly is going to give some others a run for the money,

People are sort of reassessing interest rates ahead of next week's Fed meeting as well, ... Tomorrow, they'll be looking to see what the jobs report says about the strength of the economy.

Overall, earnings have been pretty decent so far, and that is what the market is responding to,

The decline in the core rate is very good news; it confirms that inflation continues to remain subdued, ... It shows that prices outside of energy are actually falling, which is great news for the Federal Reserve.

What I fear is that these numbers are not telling us everything, ... The worst news on the jobs front is yet to come in the next six months, which I think is still going to give room for the Fed to ease.

Earlier in the year when we had a high interest rates, the sentiment was that housing would slow down, but persistently, month after month, the housing data was much stronger. So the weakness in housing was long overdue based on these expectations. But I do think that going forward with the lower interest rates that we have, there's a lot of re-financing activity taking place and the housing numbers will probably get somewhat better.

Oil prices continue to be the leading headache for the market, and I don't think that's going to change anytime soon,

The momentum (for durable goods) still continues to be pretty robust,

The numbers confirm the perspective that the market has already priced in -- that the Fed will move to a neutral directive at its meeting next week,

Even with a lot of economic news out today and this week, there are ongoing questions about the economy, and about what the Fed will do or say next week,

The Fed has stated pretty steadily that they are on this measured pace of tightening, and investors will be looking to see that they maintain that pace,

The Fed has made it pretty clear that they are going to keep raising rates at a measured pace, ... I don't think there will be anything in Greenspan's testimony or the minutes to suggest otherwise.

In the last couple of weeks, market participants forgot about the idea of a tightening, ... People woke up to the idea that maybe the tightening isn't over.

The economic numbers were generally upbeat, ... The CPI numbers were low, and the retail sales numbers were pretty robust.