14 Quotes by Mike Englund

We're basically entering the year on a pretty strong clip, even though the economy is likely to slow later in 2006. The first signals for the first quarter show the economy is gaining speed.

Our guess is that the Fed is going to attempt to avoid any such signal in the minutes, but it's possible the market will attempt to find one anyway.

Overall, trade deficits tend to widen with hurricanes, due to the Southeast region's bias towards exports to Latin America over imports.

We had felt auto sales would be the wart, the one thing pulling consumer spending down in the month, but these sales were solid. Depending on what we get for employment Friday it looks like January economic activity will turn out to be quite solid.

Confidence should remain healthy well into 2006 given robust trends for employment, income, and consumer spending.

Fed tightening is being transmitted throughout the yield curve to other rates, so we're really just starting to see the result of a year and a half of Fed tightening.

The September employment figures could be interpreted as signaling a slowdown in the economy with a pickup in wage growth, but don't count on it. The impact of hurricane Floyd might well have been larger than indicated.

The momentum in the economy and job market, combined with mortgage rates that remain near generational lows, continues to provide a solid backdrop for housing,

As long as initial claims remain on a comfortable 320,000 glide-path into the new year, we should see continued payroll growth of 180,000 to 190,000.