Remember the great East Coast blizzard of 2001? It shut down our nation's capital, dumped 2 feet of snow on the Jersey shore and gridlocked airports nationwide, right? Not exactly. Outside of a few extra inches of snow in Boston, the only thing that was dumped in that storm was our collective confidence in weather forecasters. They made the call, but mother nature didn't cooperate. 

That same kind of gloomy forecast has been made by many concerning the U.S. economy in recent weeks. The slumping stock market, announcements of layoffs by some prominent companies, and the high price of energy are all the evidence that some people need to pronounce the economic expansion's demise. But has this expected slump actually arrived? 

You wouldn't recognize it from the data on the housing industry. Granted, the 1.647 million unit pace of residential housing starts in February is almost 10 percent down from that pace of building at this same time a year ago. But that's like comparing your home run total to Mark McGwire. To see housing starts continue above the 1.6 million unit pace at a time when indices of consumer confidence have dropped by more than 30 percent tells us that fears of an imminent slowdown are more apparent than real. 

That same stubborn resilience is also exhibited by another notoriously volatile economic indicator, motor vehicle sales. We all know that auto and truck sales have headed south, right? A hodge-podge of headlines about tire recalls, Daimler-Chrysler layoffs, and high energy prices has prompted many to start telling stories about the early 1980's. Except the economy isn't going along with the idea. 

Times have certainly changed in the auto industry, of course. Even though the 17.2 million units cars and light trucks sold in 2000 represented an all-time high, few were smiling at year's end as showroom traffic dived. But a funny thing has happened in the first two months of 2001. Instead of deteriorating further, vehicle sales have stabilized in January and managed to modestly grow in February. 

That stable, if precarious, situation is also reflected in production schedules at manufacturing facilities. Even as the Federal Reserve's overall Industrial Production Indexrecorded its fifth consecutive monthly decline in February, the production cutbacks in the motor vehicles and parts industry facilities were nearly halted. After shrinking output an average of more than six percent per month for the previous three months, production of vehicles and parts were down a scant 0.1 percent in the second month of the year. 

Those kinds of reports give credence to those who, like Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, think that the worst of the slowdown is now behind us. With the bright media spotlight trained on the precipitous declines in major stock markets, these kinds of optimistic statements doubtless have a hollow ring for some. But a stabilizing economic picture doesn't necessarily signal an end to the bleeding on Wall Street. Actors in those markets have their own set of past mistakes to account for, and events in capital markets will march to the beat of a different drummer for the immediate future.