Steven Wieting Month Quotations

It's more of a victory lap. Literally a month ago people were arguing that prices would not stop going up. Now, data we would have killed for two years ago is seen as the end of the world. But alarmists on both sides of this thing have been shown to be wrong.

He has time over time noted a single month of economic data is a poor guide to the future,

It's very unlikely for Fed to worry about month to month data changes, or even two months, as the markets do.

Seeing a two-year low in confidence in the wake of Hurricane Katrina isn't that surprising. The news in the month of September has been terrible. The television coverage and the emotional impact of the story has a big effect on confidence in the short run. But spending has been inconsistent with these confidence numbers.

Exports were flat for a second month running and that has been what is most broken in the trade picture.

September was a month where we thought there was a tremendous amount of weather impact,

What's most important is that we've got demand and supply moving ahead fast enough that we're absorbing and creating jobs month in and month out -- that's not something to lament.

Year-end financial markets can be difficult, and winter economic data is difficult to read. It makes more sense that December will be month they skip. You don't want to be raising rates into what can be an illiquid market.