Jim O'Sullivan

The weight of evidence is showing housing is starting to cool. Prices have continued to rise faster than income. For a while that pattern has been offset by declining mortgage rates, but that's stopped.

If there is an inflation threat building, and the Fed doesn't act and inflation starts picking up, instead of (a) 50 basis points increase it's 250 basis points.

Seventy percent of our Mazda customers spend an enormous amount of time on the Internet prior to coming to the dealership,

It shows that underlying inflation is still tame and only slowly edging up. That means the Fed can take its time hiking rates. The only question is whether it keeps moving at every meeting or takes a break now and then.

It's a reflection of strong U.S. demand. Growth in Europe and Japan is certainly going to help, but until domestic demand slows, we're not going to see a big turnaround in the trade deficit.

Almost every category of employment has improved in the last couple of years, ... But compared to what we were seeing during much of those two years ago, it's now effectively a balanced recovery.

Consumer spending growth has generally been trending at about 2.5-to-3 percent at an annual rate -- not booming, but not terrible, ... The fact that the job market is still weak is restraining optimism a bit hopefully, as the recovery gathers pace, we will start to see more job growth.

The Fed won't admit to reacting to one number.

Certainly, the degree of strength through August is not sustainable we'll get a much weaker number in September. But the third quarter as a whole will still show 5 to 6 percent consumer spending growth, even if we get a negative number in September.

Historically this number tracks the economy, in general, pretty well. And of all the numbers, this report really has almost the least amount of noise.

Strictly speaking it's not that the stock market views good news as bad, directly.

It's old news and pretty inconsequential changes.

I don't think the holiday season will be as good as last year. Right now people are facing higher gasoline prices. As winter arrives, the higher cost of natural gas will push up utility bills.

This is consistent with the continued downtrend in housing demand.

The weekly claims number is as good an indicator as there is we watch weekly chain-store sales numbers for clues on retail sales and the confidence numbers have not correlated with spending by any mans, but they have captured the spirit of the economy in the past couple of months,

It was weaker than expected, but it wasn't a dramatic surprise. It was already pretty clear that sentiment came off in January.

The clear message seems to be that while oil is a drag, it's not a downward driver of consumer spending, ... The labor market is generating good income in general and the housing market continues to deliver a positive wealth effect. These factors are helping to offset the impact of higher oil prices.

It underscores how much profits have been squeezed and helps explain why business investment is weakening as much as it is in the second quarter.

In the whole post-war rebound story, the first part has come through -- we've clearly seen a bounce in consumer confidence. The next key step is business activity measures improving, including employment indicators. Hopefully we will see weekly jobless claims coming down soon -- in the next three-to-four weeks.

Some of the pickup reflects mix shifts, with payroll growth in above-average-wage sectors accelerating relative to growth in below-average-wage sectors. That said, some legitimate pickup in wage gains is probably credible given the low unemployment rate and the energy-led rise in inflation expectations recently.

Inflation is obviously a little bit higher than expected. Food and apparel were up. This is not going to stand in the way of further Fed easing.

In our forecast, we see consumer spending slowing a little bit in the fourth quarter to 3.1 percent from 3.8 percent for the same period last year, ... The rationale is that as the housing market slows , there'll be a cooling effect in the home wealth effect and the fluctuating energy prices will also have some drag on spending in the months ahead.

The addition of the CX-7 to the Mazda lineup is a critical step forward for us in terms of our ability to grow Mazda's business in North America.

The CX-7 wasn't even a sketch on a cocktail napkin a little over two years ago. The fact that I'm standing here today watching the first CX-7 roll off the line marks a milestone in Mazda's ability to design and engineer vehicles for specific markets such as North America.