Avery Shenfeld Quotations

Whenever you have a situation where inflation is not a material risk and the economy is underperforming, you should be thinking about a rate cut. There's a potential reward and not much risk.

Central banks continue to be guided by macroeconomic models that relate to an economy that no longer exists.

Given all the leverage that the household sector has built up, their confidence in rising home equity has been an important part of their willingness to take on all that (mortgage) debt.

If, as we expect, the economy were to show signs of a slowing by May, the Fed will want to give it the benefit of the doubt by standing pat at that point.

Looking only at 'affected areas' could understate the storm impacts, due to linkages between ports and more distant facilities.... we know that jobless claims have fallen off sharply as we moved past the storm impacts, another hint of underlying labor market vitality.

Look for the Fed to leave its poker-face statement unchanged.

This was a month in which a number of one-time events conspired to mask the true strength of the economy.

We've had a run of fairly positive reports out of the major banks, so financials continue to do well and they have a heavy weight in the Toronto index.

We expect the combination of a U.S. growth moderation and the lagged impacts of a strong Canadian dollar on factory employment to do a lot of the work in engineering that cooling in Canadian hiring, leaving the Bank of Canada with only another 50 basis points in rate hikes.

Today's statement ups the odds that the Bank of Canada will be back again with a 25 bp (basis point) 'Christmas present' in December.

These confidence surveys are reflecting what people are reading -- that the economy is not creating jobs. It doesn't mean that people are not spending.

August's 169,000 jobs gain, coupled with a 44,000 upward revision to the prior two months, left payroll employment just about where the market expected.

It's oil and natural gas prices that move the hearts and minds of those following the Canadian dollar these days.

The Bank of Canada remains on the warpath against inflation in an economy where recent job and production gains are, in its view, too much of a good thing.

The warning bells are starting to ring, that the drag on manufacturing from the Canadian dollar . . . is starting to show through, now that the U.S. economy is starting to slow.

In Canada, CPI inflation will be everywhere in energy, and nowhere in anything else, mirroring what we saw in the U.S. figures for September.

If markets felt the Bank of Canada was going to press on with rate hikes after the Fed stopped, that could fuel an overheated Canadian dollar, providing too much of a braking force on exports.

I place more emphasis on jobs numbers than on confidence surveys in estimating consumers' attitudes. And that has not looked promising.

Although financial markets have confidently priced-in a May rate hike, low core inflation implies that the case for risking growth by pushing rates higher is far from clear. If, as we expect, the economy were to show signs of a slowing by May, the Fed will want to give it the benefit of the doubt by standing pat at that point.

Ahead of the storm clouds, the American job market was humming along nicely, a result that says little about where things will stand as the recent spike in energy prices begins to bite,

All told, a fairly strong reading that will only buttress the Bank of Canada's case for remaining hawkish.