Economist Nouriel Roubini, via Twitter:
(Philly Fed report) "Uglier than ugly. ...Double Dip is ahead for U.S. & Europe .... Thus gold, like U.S. Treas yields, is pricing risk that we go into another deflationary depression & global financial meltdown, not inflation."
Jennifer Lee, senior economist, BMO Nesbitt Burns:
The Bottom Line: Recession calls just got louder.
Daniel Alvarez, an analyst at XTB brokers in Madrid, via Agence France-Presse:
"We find ourselves with an economy in fear, both in the U.S. and the EU, with fear and uncertainty about everything,"
Sal Catrini, managing director for equities at Cantor Fitzgerald & Co in New York, via Reuters:
"The market is in meltdown mode; the data continues to stink. I don't know that there's much more to be said. We continue to be in a soft patch." Sal Catrini, managing director for equities at Cantor Fitzgerald & Co in New York.
Paul Dales, Senior U.S. economist, Capital Economics:
"August's horrible U.S. Philly Fed manufacturing survey and July's existing home sales data will only exacerbate the renewed sense of jitters currently taking hold of the financial markets. The plunge in the headline index of the Philly Fed survey, to -30.7 in August from +3.2 in July, was simply awful. It leaves it at a level last seen in March 2009, when the U.S. was last in recession. .. In short, there was no good news."
Credit Suisse analysis:
"If the Philly Fed numbers prove to be indicative of national activity trends, then a recession likely began in August. The open question is whether or not they are indicative. The Philly Fed district represents a small slice of a small portion of the national economy (manufacturing is about 12% of GDP). And other high frequency data for early August has not been nearly as awful. ... But, as we've seen in other recession episodes, the Philly Survey has a nose for trouble. For example, it was among the first data points to respond to the post-Lehman disruption (falling to -38.9 from -1.4 in October 2008). "