Hikes Quotes

[Greenspan] believes that the economy will be brisk enough to require more in the way of rate hikes if inflation is to be contained. At the same time, the Fed must be careful not to tighten so aggressively so that it does not risk bursting regional home price bubbles. - John Lonski

[( TIME.com ) -- Great news! Unemployment is up. Wages are stagnant. Hiring by U.S. companies is down for the first time in more than four years. But there might be some help wanted on Wall Street soon, because Friday's unemployment report is the stuff rallies are made of. Just a half hour into the trading day, the Dow was up 175 and the NASDAQ almost 200 (with inflation-fearing bonds whooping it up right alongside them) as investors saw visions of the long season of economic overdrive, interest-rate hikes and neurotic markets drawing to a close.] This is the latest sign that the economy is slowing down, and because these are labor numbers, they're going to have particular weight with the Fed... This is the kind of news that could take some of the uncertainty out of the markets and get stocks going up again. - Bernard Baumohl

(Greenspan) cut rates three times last year, but he said that the conditions that required those cuts are no longer with us. So the outside limit to what he is going to do is three hikes. My guess is that you will only end up with a couple of them, a quarter-point at the end of this month, one in August, and maybe one in October. - David Jones

(Confidence) was very surprising. I guess people are tolerating the gasoline prices -- the gasoline price hikes -- surprisingly well. - David Laster