[Deborah Marchini, Cnn Anchor:] A lot of economic reports for Wall Street to look forward to this week. And, of course, there's that Fed meeting tomorrow. Susan Lisovicz joins me now with a preview. Hello.
[Susan Lisovicz, Cnn Correspondent:] Hello, Deborah. Well, you were just talking about Caterpillar, and those are some of the things that we don't know about in advance, but certainly capable of moving the markets. And we've had a lot of negative warnings in the last two weeks for sure, a lot of big, high-profile companies. But here's some things that we do know about. Starting today, one of them concerns the housing sector. We will be hearing about construction spending today, as well as something that we call the NAPM, or the National Association of Purchasing Managers, give us an idea of what's going on with factory orders and the like. Tomorrow, the Fed meeting, what Deborah just referred to. Typically, the Federal Reserve does not make any sort of move prior to a presidential election, what with the continuing signs of the economy slowing. That would certainly reinforce that tradition. But we also have new home sales and leading economic indicators; on Wednesday, factory orders; and on Friday, the employment report for the month of September. We also have as we were talking about during the commercial break, Deborah, we have the presidential debate, tomorrow the first of three scheduled, and we'll see if that any sort of bombshell announcements on the economy that could come from either Gov. Bush or Vice President Gore.
[Marchini:] All right, looking at all of these, I guess the most forward looking are the purchasing management report, and Friday's employment report because that gives us the first official look at the month of September. A lot of nervousness surrounding these numbers, or the thinking is just it won't affect Fed policy one way or the other?
[Lisovicz:] Again, the tradition with the Federal Reserve, especially prior to election this is the closest one that pretty much people are referring to, the pollsters are saying in 30 years it's very unlikely that the Fed would touch interest rates, and especially because we've had continuing signs of a slowing economy. And certainly with the deluge of warnings that we've gotten in the last two weeks, that would reinforce that as well.
[Marchini:] All right, thank you, Susan.