Some more good economic news (...NOT!)

Factory orders see biggest drop in 6 years
New orders plunged nearly 6 percent in January on a slump in airline orders.
March 6 2007: 10:10 AM EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- New orders at U.S. factories tumbled by a greater-than-expected 5.6 percent in January, the biggest decline in more than six years, on a big drop in aircraft orders, a Commerce Department report showed Tuesday.

It was the biggest monthly decline in orders since an 8.6 percent decrease in July 2000, the government said. Analysts polled by Reuters were expecting orders to decline 4.3 percent.
ECONOMY

Stripping out defense goods, orders fell by 5.5 percent, the largest monthly slide on record.
Productivity gains slow, labor costs up

Transportation orders fell 19 percent on a 60.2 percent drop in civilian aircraft orders and a 58.9 percent slide in military aircraft orders. When transportation was stripped out, orders fell 2.9 percent, their largest slide since September.

Durable goods orders were revised down to 8.7 percent drop in January, the biggest drop since July 2000. Nondefense capital goods orders excluding aircraft, a proxy for business spending, were off 6.3 percent, the largest decrease since January 2004.

All nondefense capital goods orders plummeted 20.2 percent, the biggest drop on record.

In a sign businesses are managing their stockpiles, inventories fell 0.2 percent in January, the first decline since February of 2006.

Still, the inventories-to-shipments ratio, a measure of how many months it would take to exhaust stores of goods, edged up to 1.23 months' time from 1.22 in December.