The Associated Press sees "signs recession nears bottom." There were two major data releases this morning.
The first was weekly unemployment claims. The number for the week was 669,000, near the high for the downturn. In addition, the prior weeks number was revised up from 652,000 to 657,000. That doesn't look too encouraging.
The bright spot cited by AP was that durable goods orders were up 1.8 percent, slightly higher than the consensus estimate of 1.5 percent. Of course, the data was also accompanied by a downward revision of the January data from a decline of 1.9 percent to 3.5 percent. This means that the orders data for February were 1.3 percent lower than expected by the consensus among economic forecasters. If we get too much more good news like this, we will all be unemployed.
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