83 Quotes by Diane Swonk

Not only are retailers doing more with less, like every other large corporation, and taking advantage of six fewer days in the shopping season, but they are actually hiring less this holiday shopping season, so there's fewer people on the floors actually helping consumers out.

The Fed will sit on its hands. There's really no reason to do otherwise. The economy's falling into place as the Fed thought -- it's in a soft spot, with some light at the end of the tunnel.

The Fed wants to see whether this July data, this bad economic data, was an aberration, and two months will make it clearer. If they see more instability in financial markets, they will take it lower.

The Fed is willing to overshoot the mark. I want to underscore that we're catching up. We're getting the market back in line, but we're not going to see positive earnings from that until we get into the third quarter,

The Fed doesn't want to be dealing with the old economy, with deficits returning. They're trying to have some impact on decisions made now without getting us into permanent problems.

The consumer is not about to die on us, but let's face it, it's time for them to give a little slack to the business sector.

In the aftermath of Katrina, the effect on the labor market from the fallout has been limited.

By the end of the year, there will be some builders with some overhang of construction relative to demand, ... Now's the time when you'd hope everybody cools off a bit and moderates their building, but that's not human nature -- and it's not the way for homebuilders to make money in the near term.

The effect of the strike will be to short-circuit momentum in the U.S. economy, but we are well positioned to absorb it,