Chris McCarty Quotations

Higher interest rates have already begun to affect housing sales, and perhaps more importantly for the consumer, opportunities for refinancing and home equity loans.

I think a lot of it will be tied to housing. Gas prices are ticking back up, and they are higher than they were the same time last year.

Consumers in Florida continue to surprise me. I had expected consumer confidence to remain the same or decline this month, but consumers felt differently.

Consumers continue to be optimistic about the economy here in Florida. The employment situation here in Florida is better than it has been in decades, at least in terms of people having jobs. The stock market had a pretty good run in January, too, ending near 11,000.

Consumers are certainly beginning to curtail their spending in reaction to the rise in gasoline.

We had been expecting a decline in confidence for the past couple of months, and it finally came in February.

Increasingly, consumer confidence seems to be driven by the price of gasoline. The rise in confidence last month appears to have been a lagged reaction to lower gas prices in February. But we have more than made up for those drops in the last two months, and gas prices are headed upward as the summer traveling season approaches.

Increasingly, consumer confidence seems to be driven by the price of gasoline.

We expect a decline in consumer confidence as several factors come to bear on the consumer.

There are already signs of a slowdown in real estate, particularly in Florida markets that have been bid up due to speculative buying.