UNEXPECTEDLY! Durable goods orders drop 3.6% in April. “The decrease in capital goods was even more dramatic, at 7.3% in the non-defense market. That points to a significant decrease in business investment, which would indicate that the private sector has turned bearish on the weak recovery from the Great Recession. If so, the tax break given to businesses as part of the deal made between the White House and Congress in December that allowed businesses to take a 100% write-off on FY2011 capital investment appears to have already run its course. That’s bad news for the Obama administration, which had hoped to ride a rising economic wave to a second term in office for Barack Obama.”