Nariman Behravesh Quotations

There is no question that we are going out in this year with a lot of momentum.

There is no question that the deficit this year will be worse than last year. A number of the improvements in May were temporary.

With these discounts out there, people who were thinking of buying cars later in the year bought them earlier instead.

There is beginning to be evidence that high energy prices are starting to spill over into the rest of the economy.

When India was the new trend, companies had a gold-rush mentality. Now companies are taking a more mature, sober attitude.

Let's be clear -- for the next couple of months the employment numbers are going to look terrible. There's going to be a lot of noise and problems gathering the data, so it's going to be tougher than usual to sift through the tea leaves and really get at the heart of what's going on here.

Natural gas prices are going to go through the roof in the next couple of months, and that is going to hurt a lot of families.

Perhaps the single best piece of economic news in 2005 was that record-high energy prices did not spill over into the rest of the economy. While the Fed can be relaxed about inflationary risks in the U.S. economy, its role is to preempt.

Bush has probably made the best choice among the top contenders for the post and one that is likely to reassure financial markets.

From lawn services to meat packing, you name it. The primary benefit to consumers from illegal workers is lower prices.

His willingness to change is important in a world that changes rapidly.

I think that whole line of reasoning is overdone.

I think the way out of these deficits is that the U.S. currency will start to come down over the next two to three years.

Record-high profits, combined with solid economic growth and rising capacity utilization will translate into robust capital spending - all good news for the industrial sectors of the economy.

Record-high energy prices did not spill over into the rest of the economy.

It is encouraging that core inflation in 2005 was no higher than the year before even though we had record oil prices. From that perspective, the Fed can feel confident that inflation won't get out of control.

That suggests that we are getting some inflationary pressures building in the pipeline,

When it is up around 6%, it feels a lot worse.

The problem is the combined effects of the disruptions from Katrina and Rita, plus the ripple effects in the economy from higher energy prices,

We are in a much more competitive environment than we were 20 years ago.

We are headed for a Katrina-induced soft patch, but I would not interpret this as the early warning of a recession.

We are just starting to see the impact of Katrina. We are going to see awful inflation numbers, awful employment numbers and awful industrial production numbers for a few months.

While inflation remains tame, inflationary pressures keep building. Thus, the Fed can't let its guard down.

The good news for the U.S. is that growth has diversified. We aren't just relying on the consumer and housing.

We seem to be able to absorb serial shocks.

While there is no room for complacency, the Fed can take comfort in the fact that core inflation remains tame, despite some modest inflationary pressures. Global Insight predicts that the Fed is near the end of its tightening cycle.

We will take a hit to growth but we won't fall into a recession.

Both growth and inflation in the coming months could be stronger than financial markets are currently expecting. There is a growing risk that the Fed will have to tighten further and longer than many analysts anticipate.

Even though consumers may be a little jittery, they haven't stopped spending.

Even before the hurricane hit, rising energy prices were having a dampening effect on the economy,

There's not a lot of relief in sight. I would not be surprised to see the monthly deficit go above $60 billion by fall, and stay there.

Rather than the doom and gloom we've been hearing, the consumer hasn't packed it in, and Christmas sales will be reasonably good.

Of that 8.9 percent, maybe a third of it was weather-related. The rest of it is underlying trend of weakness in the housing market. You are seeing pervasive signs of weakness.

The most pleasant surprise and remarkable development in 2005 has been the resilience of the US and Asian economies to record high oil prices.

Once you take out the impact of Hurricane Katrina, demand for manufactured goods remains pretty robust. The underlying strength in the economy is still pretty good.

Auto numbers reflect the ripple effect of incentive programs pulling forward sales from the fourth quarter into the third quarter.

This is bad news, but it's old news, I fully expect the economy to bounce back strongly in the first quarter.

This is bad news, but it's old news.

This is an economy where airlines are paying record prices for jet fuel, and yet it is very hard to pass through those costs.

A strong economy and post-hurricane reconstruction boosted growth in November and could keep housing strong through early 2006.

It's starting to happen in high-tech professions which we felt were 'ours,' ... That's what's shocking people.

The big uncertainty is how much of a hit the housing marketing will take. Is it going to be a hard landing or a soft landing? I worry about that much more than I worry about high fuel prices right now.

This is just more evidence that we have got pretty solid growth and very little inflation.

The labor market is growing at a pretty good pace. We're clearly seeing a rebound in the economy from the soft spot we experienced in the fourth quarter, and I think we'll see payroll growth similar to last year.

The fact that we're not getting a spillover into the rest of the economy is pretty good news. The question that core inflation asks: Is the price of everything going to go through the roof? So far the answer is no.

The Fed seems to have engineered a soft landing.

The Fed can take comfort in the fact that core inflation remains tame, despite some modest inflationary pressures - gradually rising wage inflation, tighter capacity constraints and higher oil prices.

His academic work on inflation targeting will be of great comfort to many market analysts and investors who are beginning to fret about inflation,

Because the economy is strong and job growth is strong, the consumer has not felt much pain, but that is likely to change in the next few months, ... I think we are headed for a period of economic weakness mostly related to the oil situation.

The U.K. tried to cool off the housing market and slow their economy a bit, and they're caught in a situation where the economy is slowing but inflation isn't mostly because of oil prices, ... It's a bit of a dilemma, and that's reflected in their split vote.

The typical pattern with a natural disaster like this is that the regional economy gets clobbered but you can barely see it in the national statistics. This time it is very different because of the impact on the energy infrastructure.

These inflation concerns point to more rather than less tightening by the Fed in coming months.

These high energy prices are beginning to spill over into the rest of the economy. Finally, airlines are able to raise ticket prices and hotels are able to raise room rates and on and on.

All housing indicators point to a slowdown that is in full swing: falling home sales, rising inventories, and now falling starts and permits.

The higher energy costs will put a squeeze on both businesses and households. They're spending so much on energy - the households on gasoline, the airlines on jet fuel, for example - that they'll have to curtail elsewhere.

The industrial production numbers in the next two months will look pretty awful as the full impact of the hurricane-related shutdowns shows up in the data.

A lot will depend on how weak housing gets, in terms of whether we go into a real soft patch or not. That's the key here.

The economy is on a somewhat stronger growth trajectory.

The G-7 is quite impotent on oil. They can say what they want, but they won't have a lot of effect on prices.

The fundamentals for strong capital spending remain in place - record corporate profits and an economy that will post solid growth.

The losers were on the low end. Retailers like Wal-Mart had a pretty lackluster holiday shopping season because their customers were hit the hardest by the energy situation.

The main thing is cost-savings which radiate out in the form of lower prices for high-tech goods, and higher profit margins for the companies,