>Can somebody tell me more about the significance if any of this
>report, and why Norris seems to contradict the report summary's
>mild tone?
The Philly Fed survey is useful, but mainly as a (regional) glimpse of what's coming in the (national) Institute for Supply Management (ISM) survey of purchasing managers (formerly known as the National Association of Purchasing Management [NAPM] survey). And the ISM is mainly a glimpse of what's coming in the Fed's industrial production index. Soooo, the Philly Fed is a selective foretaste of a foretaste of a measure of one portion of the U.S. economy. What was surprising about this one was that it was much weaker than expected. But that's no guaranteee that the ISM will be weaker than expected, nor that the IP number's going to be bad. It was just another piece of bad news in an environment already fairly saturated with bad news.
Doug