Category Archive

As far as consumers are concerned, the worst is now behind us
—Lynn Franco, director of the Conference Board’s consumer research center

—Present Conditions, increased from 25.5 to 28.9
—Expectation, increasesd to 72.3, the highest level since December 2007

We see no evidence that a recovery in home prices has begun
—David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at S&P

The housing market still has somewhat of a ways to go before it completely bottoms. Prices I think still will fall a little bit further.
—Celia Chen, an economist at Moody’s Economy.com

There are very few V-shaped recoveries in the history of real estate, and this one is likely to be even slower because of the size of the bubble.
—Robert Shiller

History suggests that new-home sales bottom long before unemployment peaks, and perception of the economy starts to improve long before we see actual economic improvement. This time around we don’t know if that will hold true.

…If you are looking at prices relative to income and rents, you could argue that we are at the bottom, and I’m cautiously optimistic that we may be. It’s possible, however, that we could have a second wave of foreclosures and the very small amount of support the economy might have gotten will turn into the reverse.
—Thomas Lawler, former Fannie Mae economist

-Year over Year – Composite 20 is down 18.7% for March 2009
-Both Arizona and Las Vegas have declined at least 50% from the peak
-San Francisco and Miami have both declined more than 45% from the peak
-NYC is down 2.5% Month over Month, 12% Year over Year, and 20% from the peak
-NYC hit its 33rd month of declines from the peak, which matches the Composite 10. Declines through June would mark the 3 year anniversary of Month over Month declines
-Boston has faced 42 months, or 3.5 years, of declines
-Charlotte, Portland and Seattle have faced the shortest period of declines, with 19 months

The economy is still a scary place. My net feeling is that this rally doesn’t have all that much more to go and the dangers out there remain consequential…Can the stock market do well in a muddling period in the economy, where at best it grows at a percent or two for a period of time? Maybe. But it’s not a period where you see an effusive stock market.
—Michael Steinhardt

Except for US Treasuries, what can you hold?. Gold? You don’t hold Japanese government bonds or UK bonds. US Treasuries are the safe haven. For everyone, including China, it is the only option. We hate you guys. Once you start issuing $1 trillion-$2 trillion [$1,000bn-$2,000bn] …we know the dollar is going to depreciate, so we hate you guys but there is nothing much we can do.
—Luo Ping, Director General at the China Banking Regulatory Commission on 11 Feb 2009.

And there certainly is no shortage of evidence that China’s public complaints about the safety of US financial assets haven’t kept it from buying US Treasuries. … as long as they report their reserves in dollars, holding Treasuries is the one safe choice.
—Brad Setser

Our national gloom is real enough, but it isn’t a matter of insufficient funds. It’s a matter of insufficient certainty. Americans have been perfectly happy with far less wealth than most of us have now, and we could quickly become those Americans again — if only we knew we had to.
—Daniel Gilbert

Just about all of the economic indicators out there are suggesting that the free-fall has come to an end, that we’ve stabilized. Probably the worst in terms of shocks to the system is over. The acute stress that we had last fall after the failure of Lehman has been reduced. Interest-rate spreads on commercial paper are way down, interest-rate spreads on corporate debt are down a little bit. The spread on interbank lending is down. All of the indicators are telling the same story. Things are getting worse, but they’re getting worse more slowly. I don’t think we’ve hit bottom, but the bottom is not too much further below us. My big concern is that we don’t hit the bottom and bounce, we hit the bottom and stay there. It’s not obvious where recovery comes from.

The U.S. dollar is going to fall quite a lot, or at least significantly. The demand for dollars has been temporarily inflated by the crisis. Good news is actually bad news for the dollar. If things stabilize, then the safe-haven demand for dollars falls off. I view the Chinese agitation about a new currency as basically an attempt to have somebody rescue them from their own investment decision. China bought too many dollars. Now it’s looking at it and saying, ‘we’re going to lose a lot of money on this investment’.

—Paul Krugman, citing improvements in global purchasing managers’ indices, industrial production figures in the U.S. and freight-loading figures at major ports.

…nonetheless…

There is still a very large unfunded capital requirement in the commercial banking system in the United States and that’s got to be funded. Until the price of homes flattens out we still have a very serious potential mortgage crisis.
—Alan Greenspan, 20 May 2009

We expect upward pressure on claims stemming from auto- related layoffs. The labor market will remain weak, with gradual improvement on the horizon.
—Maxwell Clarke, chief U.S. economist at IDEAglobal, as initial claims fell by 1k to 631k, and the four week moving average of initial claims fell from 632k to 628.5k, with more than 6.66mm people collecting benefits, a record reading

We continue to be very cautious about the economic outlook
—Kenneth Chenault, CEO, AMEX

It was an error of judgment.
—Michael Gove, a Conservative representing Surrey Heath, west of London, at a local church 18 May 2009, explaining claims for reimbursement of a 500-pound ($780) hotel bill and 7,000 pounds for furniture.

You’ve mentioned honor. Isn’t the honorable thing to resign?
—Philip Blakebrough, a lawyer, responds

Option value plays a big role in search. Indeed, if you didn’t have the option to truncate the search, it could hardly be called search. And option value is increasing in the riskiness of the choices—which means that it is better to look at risky choices early in the search process.

It follows that the standard practice of ordering retrieved documents by their expected relevance, or expected value, or any such expectation is not really right. The actual ordering should depend not only on the estimated first moment of the distribution, but on higher moments as well.
—Hal Varian on Search in 1999

“This is less a focus on Democrats and more a focus on the party…it’s time to get our heads out of the clouds, out of the sand, and stop the moping,” started Michael Steele.

“You might be building bridges with the Republicans, but you’re going to burn a bridge with the Democrats. You’re going to rebrand them the “Democrat Socialist Party. They’re not going to like that,” Steven Doocy said, laughing.

“I don’t know how that resolution will turn out,” Steele replied.

“Are you for that resolution?” asked Doocy.

“No, I am not for that at all,” responded Steele. “I’ve mentioned that to folks inside the party and said we need to be smart and strategic about that.”

Here’s something else for you to consider before you write an obituary for newspapers: The printed product still provides the most efficient way to deliver a mass of price and product advertising at a moment in time across a broad spectrum of our society. The Internet can provide access to that information, but only the newspaper can efficiently put it in front of a mass audience on a particular day.

I recognize that there may come a time when this can be done via the Internet. But The Courier-Journal , which operates the dominant local Web site, is well positioned for that turn of events. Of course, retailers would like to use their own Web sites to reach a mass audience, but efforts to make this happen have not gone well. Consider, for example, that Wal-Mart, the undisputed king of retail, reaches less than 3 percent of total Web users in a given month with its own Web site. Courier-Journal.com reaches 31 percent of its entire market every week, and that number is growing fast.

—Arnold Garson, President and Publisher of The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky