The New York Times-20080128-Looking Ahead- -Business-Financial Desk-

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Looking Ahead; [Business/Financial Desk]

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ECONOMIC INDICATORS A big week for economic news will be led off by the Federal Reserve's announcement on interest rates on Wednesday and capped by the unemployment report for January. Other reports will include new home sales for December (Monday); durable goods for December and the Conference Board consumer confidence index for January (Tuesday); the first estimate of fourth-quarter gross domestic product and the ADP employment forecast (Wednesday); personal income and spending for December and the Chicago purchasing managers index for January (Thursday); and reports on unemployment for January, the Institute for Supply Management's manufacturing index for January, construction spending for December and the Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment index (Friday).

COMPANY REPORTS It is another brisk earnings week. Reports will come from American Express, Corning, McDonald's, Tyson Foods and Verizon Communications (Monday); 3M, Allstate, Countrywide Financial, Dow Chemical, Eli Lilly, JetBlue Airways, Northwest Airlines and Yahoo (Tuesday); Altria, Amazon.com, Boeing, Eastman Kodak, Honda, Kellogg, Kraft Foods, Starbucks and United Parcel Service (Wednesday); Anheuser-Busch, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Procter & Gamble, Raytheon, Royal Dutch Shell, E. W. Scripps, Sony and Wyeth (Thursday); and Chevron, Exxon Mobil and Gannett (Friday).

ET CETERA The chief financial officer of Dell, Donald J. Carty, will hold a news conference in Bratislava, Slovakia, on plans to expand in the country (Tuesday).

Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, will speak at an investment forum in Moscow (Wednesday).

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