First-Quarter Productivity Report to be Released Tomorrow
DEBORAH MARCHINI, CNN ANCHOR: We're going to give you another kind of forecast of the week ahead now. I am joined by markets editor Sasha Salama who's going to tell us what to look out for in the statistics on the economy, and some market news as well -- hi.</s>SASHA SALAMA, CNN MARKETS EDITOR: Good morning, Deborah. We do have a pretty big week on the economic front, with especially the consumer going to be the center of attention, consumer spending, to be more specific. What we're looking for is productivity for the first quarter. That comes out tomorrow. That's a favorite of the Federal Reserve. And, of course, we're just a week away from that May 15 meeting of the FOMC, where it is expected that the Fed will continue to cut interest rates, especially after getting that unemployment report out on Friday, which showed a lot more weakness in the job market than had been expected -- lots of jobs lost, and the rate of unemployment rising to 4.5 percent -- so productivity tomorrow. Coming up on Thursday, we've got weekly jobless claims, which, this past week, surged to a higher level than had been expected -- same-store sales for the month of April and retail sales Thursday and Friday very important because consumer spending receiving a lot of attention in the wake of what's being called by many a corporate profits recession. The consumer so far has held up fairly well. But with all the layoffs in various industries, the big question is: Will the consumer really continue to hold up in terms of spending? Also, a key report out Friday is wholesale inflation: producer prices for the month of April. And we're not expecting to see any big revival in inflation on that front. So that's what's coming up on the economic calendar. In terms of the corporate news calendar, some stocks to watch today include 3Com. The maker of computer networking equipment trades on the Nasdaq COMS. The company is expected to announce a second round of layoffs -- "Wall Street Journal" saying that the layoffs could come as early as today, part of a goal of cutting about $1 billion in costs annually. And this would be after 3Com laid off 1,200 people just in February. So that's one stock to watch.</s>MARCHINI: Not a very positive development there. OK, Sasha Salama, thank you. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com