Steve Ricchiuto Quotations

People who were really slashing third-quarter GDP forecasts might need to rethink. The economy was more resilient than people thought. It supports the thesis that the Fed will raise rates in September at least,

I think it is something that the Street has to take on board as potentially signaling that the Fed may do a little bit more,

I think to a great number of Americans, what happened in their 401(k), or in their pension program, or their IRA was something they were not able to tap anyway, and we are just basically getting back to the upward trajectory over a 10-year pattern anyway, so I don't think people are terribly paranoid about it.

Sales ex-autos were decidedly stronger than people had given credit for. This is an important piece of information on where the economy was prior to Katrina.

Are we going to slow to the growth that we've seen in this morning's report? ... No. We're probably going to come back to something closer to trend. The Fed puts the trend at about 3 percent. I think we're apt to come back toward the 3 percent level. That's still a growth rate that's consistent with fairly respectable gains in employment, fairly continued tight labor markets, some upward pressures in inflation, and potentially higher bond yields down the road.

The Fed raises rates the next two meetings and then holds with a bias toward tightening.

The Fed cut rates back in November as a growth insurance policy, and here we are, four months later, and employment is still declining. This is an important statement to makers of monetary policy -- you need to come in here and do something to get an extra insurance policy.

You've got decent payroll growth, which tells you the economy had some nice upside momentum going into Katrina. But it doesn't tell what the economy has done after Katrina and that's really the problem for the marketplace right now.

You've got a healthy economy that is starting to show employment gains offsetting what you're losing from the housing industry. The Fed raises rates the next two meetings and then holds with a bias towards tightening.

The market has come a long way and investors got in ahead of themselves. I don't think that anyone is changing positions. I think it's just a consolidation type of environment here.