This is CBSi and the world. I'm John Bachelor. The Business of America is small business and I welcome Jean Marks, the small business columnist,

Guardian newspaper, UK and US edition,

our hometown newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer,

other distinguished publications,

we go immediately to a metric that Jean has educated me

to understand is a measure of American confidence. It's the

architecture index and when it's rising there is good news ahead when it's not

rising.

Gina, a very good evening to you.

Soft is the term that the Wall Street likes to use for

indexes that are weaker than expected.

Does soft apply to the architecture index that you're flagging?

Good evening, Tewe.

Yeah, and yeah, it really does.

And yeah, I love that you love this index because I love the index too.

It's the American Institute of Architects.

For those of you that have had a head of the rock and I listen to us all these many years.

I'd like to track it every month.

The index itself, yeah, there's more bad news than good news,

but I'll give both sides of it.

I mean, the bad news is that it continues to track down it has been really in negative territory for quite

a while now like like releases throughout most of 2023 and now into five months of 2024.

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