The American consumer is like that bad guy in a zombie movie; shoot him; stab him. He keeps coming forward. But in the case of the consumer, it's more like: depress his wage, make him unemployed, ruin his confidence make no job growth, lower his savings rate -- none of it matters, he or she just keeps on racking up those charges.

We are coming off strong numbers, and I don't think we would want to say bad things about the housing market on the basis of these numbers alone.

You can make the case that bad things happen in October.

We tend to look at this and the Philadelphia index as an indication of what is going on in the overall economy. Most disturbing is that order backlogs are running over 50 percent, which is the glorified neutral. It's at 6 percentage points below, that's bad -- it shows companies are cannibalizing orders to move ahead.

This market is wiling to brush away bad news because it doesn't believe in it. Compare it to the Three Little Pigs, when there's a warning they say 'we've heard this before.' But one of these days, there is going to be a warning that the market should have listened to.