The economy will expand by 3 percent from here on out, and we will have growth in jobs of about 100,000 to 200,000 per month, and that's it. Get used to it.

The economic numbers were nothing less than sweet. The markets were skittish about escalating energy prices, and that never seemed to recede, even though the economy ignored that and ran.

The manufacturing expansion is running out of gas,

I don't necessarily think it'll be a knockout punch, but it'll deliver a blow to economic growth in 2005,

If you look at economic data we've received since the beginning of the year, it's been definitively lower than consensus expectations in most cases.

It'll be onward and upward for the Fed's tightening cycle.

That (pulling back on lending) is a lot of what you're seeing now. Then you exacerbate the situation by having skyrocketing energy and health care costs, and you start to see why businesses may not be investing as much as we originally thought they would.

It's more important what investors believe, because those people are willing to put their money on the line like that.

forecasting on hopes, rather than what the data says.

Constraints in labor markets generally result in higher inflation, which would be met by a prolonged rate-hiking campaign by the Fed.