The risk to crops and farms won't be as significant if it loses force, ... When you look at the lessons from Katrina, the eventual damage to agriculture was less than feared. The department of agriculture actually revised up its estimates of production in the state after Katrina passed.
In terms of economic growth, the fundamentals are clearly on the side of the U.S.. We don't think there's going to be a lot of additional momentum, but even if (the dollar) treads water, it's still going to be an attractive investment.
There is an imbalance in terms of the demand and supply of energy which continues to be satisfied, or is increasingly satisfied, by external sources of energy products. Now we have a situation that has been every more complicated because of a domestic supply shock.
Maybe we should all be praying for a warm winter because that might ease the pain.
The only consolation to farmers is that the price of seafood will go up further. So when production gets back on track, fish and shrimp producers can use the profits to recover their lost costs.
We'll have very solid overall job gains that will punctuate the start of more normal activity in terms of employment.
If housing and stock prices go down, people will respond by increasing the flow of savings. If they have to save more to meet retirement objectives, then they'll have to cut down on consumption.
This is in line with our expectation that demand for new housing would 'cool off' towards the end of 2005 and in early 2006 as higher short-term interest rates, driven by the Fed, would ultimately translate into higher long-term borrowing rates.
The major markets overseas - Europe, Japan and Asia - have fairly solid underlying momentum. Japan is certainly improving and Europe is more like the Queen Elizabeth slowly turning around.
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