The five percent drop is shocking. It indicates that perhaps the consumer tax rebate stimulus that benefited retailers during the back-to-school season has petered out.

242

Housing starts would be much much higher if they could find the people to build the homes.

207

It's the biggest market we have, because people don't live in empty houses.

202

They need to keep going.

179

They're getting nervous. They're getting angry. They have not really done anything about it because they want to see if there's going to be relief for it. But now they're aware of it.

175

We haven't yet seen the negative effect of gas prices on consumer spending. It's certainly not here in these numbers. That doesn't mean it's not there. Certainly the weekly retail sales numbers have been sluggish.

161

When you take a look at what's happened in the last month, you see the same kind of pace?right on down the line. It shows a nice, steady moderate pace, which is what you want.

137

There are absolutely no price pressures in our system.

125

Corporate scandals, equity market problems, a lack of transparency, a lot of greed -- it was not just the Dow falling, it was all of these things that make people very, very nervous.

112