WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Orders for pricey U.S. factory goods and new home sales fell in January and initial claims for jobless aid inched up last week, but details in reports on Thursday suggested an economy on a solid footing.
Orders for durable goods -- items meant to last three years or more --dropped 1.8 percent last month as demand for autos and planes weakened, the Commerce Department (news - web sites) said.
The number was sharply at odds with forecasts on Wall Street for a 1.4 percent rise. But a big upward revision to December's figures helped take the sting out of the report.
In addition, orders increased a solid 2 percent excluding the volatile transport category, and numbers in the report suggested business spending would continue to climb.
In a separate report, the department said new single-family home sales slipped 1.7 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.106 million last month, the slowest pace since May.
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"This is not the start of a sustained weakening of the housing market," said Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics. "That will have to wait until there is a big and sustained increase in mortgage rates."
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=580&e=2&u=/nm/20040226/bs_nm/economy_dccomment : i'm a little rusty on my greenspanish! WTF does this report say?
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