Even though retail sales may have spurred somewhat higher long-term rates, they're still not much different from where they were a few weeks ago.

We are inclined to believe that the rise in U.S. small- capitalization stocks has gone beyond the point warranted by valuations, and have experienced a minor mania.

You have lower oil prices, you have a healthy employment situation and you have a consumer that is still willing to do a little bit of spending. That all adds up to a positive for the economy.

Part of their problems might be because of lax controls.

We've expected existing home sales to weaken for some time. It does appear that we're starting to see that trend manifest itself.

Every week the state puts out a new sales tax permit report that you can ask for sorted by ZIP code. We get a copy of that report to make sure that new folks coming into the city are reporting to the correct city. Every week there's an error.