Anthony Chan Turn Quotations

Mortgage rates will put a little bit of a brake on housing activity, ... but it may come precisely as other sectors start to turn around.

As the equity markets react positively to this change, we get a bit of a positive wealth effect which in turn should induce higher consumer spending.

There's no question unemployment is what drives consumer confidence, which in turn drives consumer spending. We have to be realistic and accept the notion that, as we enter the first quarter and December, these sales are going to get a bit weaker. We're still in a recession.

If you have productivity growing faster than the economy, how can you expect demand for labor to be all that strong? I'm still hopeful that unemployment won't go much higher than 6.2 percent or 6.3 percent, but where we'll peak is not as important as when we turn around. If we sort of linger at 6.2 percent, that will put some downward pressure on consumer spending.