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Durable goods are just that: hard goods; they don’t wear out quickly and can be used over and over again for at least several years. Think your car, TV, refrigerator or computer. These are certainly not disposable, one-time use items.
The opposite of a hard good is (surprise!) a soft good or, if you like, a non-durable good. These are products you use once, like your lunch at McDonald’s, the gas in your car and the ugly sweater your grandmother bought you for your birthday. These items have an intended lifespan short of three years, or are consumed immediately.
Investors pay attention to the monthly durable orders report released by the Commerce Department around the end of each month. When durable goods are strong, it means that U.S. manufacturing is humming along, though economists tend to parse the numbers pretty closely. Big-ticket items can skew the overall results, since an order for, say, 75 Boeing 747s has a bigger impact than 75 iPods. Luckily, the data lets economists break down the sectors.

foxbusiness.com

Announcer: It’s 3 a.m., and your children are safe and asleep. But there’s a phone ringing in the White House and this time the crisis is economic. Home foreclosures mounting, markets teetering.
John McCain just said the government shouldn’t take any real action on the housing crisis, he’d let the phone keep ringing.
Hillary Clinton has a plan to protect our homes, create jobs.
It’s 3 a.m., time for a president who’s ready.
This is, of course, a re-working of an ad that Clinton aimed at Democratic rival Barack Obama before the crucial Texas primary on March 4.
Update at 9:20 p.m. ET: The McCain campaign is circulating this post from The Page at Time magazine, about a new TV ad from McCain in response to Clinton’s ad. It starts off the same way as hers and then veers off into this:
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama just said they’d solve the problem by raising your taxes. More money out of your pocket. John McCain has a better plan. Grow jobs, grow our economy… not grow Washington. It’s 3 a.m., time for a president who is ready.
You may recall this is how Obama responded to Clinton’s original 3 a.m. ad on national security — with a copycat spot that started with her script and then veered off into why the nation would be better off with him answering the phone.
OK, we had barely finished this post when the McCain campaign sent out the ad itself:
Update at 5:30 p.m. ET: McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds responds with this e-mailed statement: "John McCain is ready to lead with a pro-growth economic plan to lower taxes, cut government spending, empower America’s entrepreneurs and get our economy back on track. Americans can’t afford the Democrats’ liberal agenda to raise taxes, nationalize health care, cut off trade and crush the economy under big government."

blogs.usatoday.com