Anthony Chan Rest Quotations

This puts to rest any question of whether or not we're going to have an explosive recovery. We're clearly not.

We're coming off 6 percent consumer spending growth in the fourth quarter, and that's going to moderate. It's not going to collapse, but see we spending in the neighborhood of 2 to 3 percent for the rest of the year.

We still see limited penetration into the rest of the economy. It's too early to say you're seeing pricing power to pass on the energy cost increases just because you saw just a jump in the core PPI number. The world has changed. In the old traditional world, whenever you had mature expansion, you had pricing power. Today with globalization, that's no longer the case.

The momentum going into 2006 is clearly healthy. We will be able to withstand weaker growth for the rest of the quarter and almost not miss a heart beat.

If the manufacturing sector remains mired in a recession mode for too long, it may be signaling the same for the rest of the economy. Although it may be a bit too early to make that assessment, there should be universal agreement that the ISM outcome certainly does not bode well for the rest of the economy.