Lara Rhame Remains Quotations

I don't think there's really any doubt the housing market remains extremely robust and growing. I had expected housing to fade. Now that we're out of recession, I don't really know what would knock it down at this point.

This is not a 'ripping off the Band-Aid' kind of situation, where you know how much the pain will be and that you'll be fine afterwards. We don't know how well the economy has healed. The Fed remains very concerned ... that they might overshoot and give the economy such a shock they'll have to cut rates again.

A lot of people don't understand that the ISM number is not actually an output number. It's the equivalent of consumer confidence, but for businesses. So certainly outlook has improved, but it remains to be seen how clearly that will translate into actual activity.

Business confidence remains very, very fragile, and we're still in an environment where businesses are more concerned with cutting costs than with ramping up investment projects.

U.S. treasury yields are rising and we've seen that support the dollar across the board. The dollar remains strong on the back of solid U.S. economic data and expectations that the 10-year yield is going to continue to go higher.