Lara Rhame Market Quotations

If we're in a situation where rates are higher because the economy's great, the housing market is going to be last thing I'll be worried about.

Market expectations for both are very fluid. All of this is driving Japanese yields up and causing the market to switch from the yen into the Swiss franc as the funding currency for carry trades.

Market expectations have priced a rate cut in. When markets are pricing it in like that, the Fed can't afford to give a downside surprise in this environment.

I think a lot of gloom still exists about the size of the deficit and the market is punishing the dollar for that.

Interest rates are low, the stock market is higher, and we hear all this talk about a tax-cut package,

Everybody has to learn a little more economics than they want to learn, now that we're drawing more and more of a distinction between actual GDP and final domestic demand, which is GDP minus inventories. Inventories can surprise. It's hard to make a solid forecast about them, and the Fed said that. I think the market continues to overestimate Fed rate cuts.

They have clearly started to apply more pressure. They have singled out China and the rest of the emerging market economies.

I don't think there's really any doubt the housing market remains extremely robust and growing. I had expected housing to fade. Now that we're out of recession, I don't really know what would knock it down at this point.

The market reacted exactly the way they wanted it to, which was to flatten the yield curve. I think the point is clear: Policy makers are going to do whatever they can to help the Fed. The rate cuts that the Fed is putting through are only hitting the short curve; they're only psychological.