Joshua Shapiro Quotations

People were expecting the worst and I think the reaction you saw is that it wasn't as Draconian as many had feared. There wasn't any real hard table pounding or anything in the minutes that pointed to a 50-basic point hike at the next meeting.

The information in the report is considered dated because the current focus is on the extent of the damage to the nation's energy and trade infrastructure and therefore on the lasting nature of the effect Hurricane Katrina.

February was not a bad month either temperature-wise. If you look at other evidence, things are beginning to roll over. You will see housing starts roll over in the months ahead.

With mortgage rates still low, there is no evidence yet that levels of housing activity are declining to any great extent.

While this was obviously a good month, we don't expect this to continue. We think it's going to be a slow drift up in core inflation going forward.

While these orders have been volatile of late, the trend remains a solid one. Whether we will see a disruption in this trend due to the surge in energy prices remains to be seen and will ultimately be more important to markets than today's pre-Katrina outcome.

The big question now is how much companies will be able to raise prices for finished products to offset the hit to profits from higher unit labor costs.

A softening trend for consumer spending is the most likely outcome for most of this year, particularly as housing cools off. However, we do not think that consumer spending growth is going to fall apart anytime soon.

We're in the early stages of a slowdown in the housing market.

Rumblings at the producer level will help keep Federal Reserve officials highly attuned to the inflation situation and will cause them to continue to tilt to the side of tighter policy.