Continued job and real wage growth is needed to increase a household's pool of cash and to strengthen discount retailers' sales. An improved labor market would make consumer spending more self-reinforcing and less dependent on tax and interest rate-related stimulus.

We just ran into a critical cash-flow problem, ... We needed protection to buy some time to make us whole.

One man's wage increase is another man's price increase.

Continued job and real wage growth is needed to increase a household's pool of cash and to strengthen discount retailers' sales, ... An improved labor market would make consumer spending more self-reinforcing and less dependent on tax and interest rate-related stimulus.

It has literally turned your house into an A.T.M. in the last couple of years. That will virtually go away.

At the end of a long economic expansion, consumers tend to be overconfident relative to their spending; raising false hopes about the ability of consumers to continue spending. At the beginning of a recovery, consumers remain in a funk even as they accelerate their pace of spending.