This is CBS I on the World.

The Business of America is Small Business.

I'm John Bachelor and I welcome Jean Marks, the Small Business columnist

for The Guardian newspaper, UK and US Edition,

as well as our hometown newspaper the Philadelphia Inquire

other distinguished publications returned from overseas.

I've missed you Jean you're back but you have a lot of explaining to do as

Ricky Arnez once said.

So what we're looking at here is the Fed Beige book,

little or no change in economic activity.

That means no one can make up their mind whether there's a recession or not.

This has been going on for a year and a half and I guess it's going to continue.

Welcome back, Jean.

Thank you, John.

Yeah, welcome back to nothing really.

You know, everybody is still wrangling, is it a soft landing, is it, we're going to go into a recession,

we're not going to have a recession, it's going to be avoided, it's not going to have a recession it's going to be avoided

you know you and I will talk about it this year you know as we get into the year

about you know whether or not you know this is this is going to be a good economic year or not.

Right now it's still too early to tell.

The Fed-Bagebook is basically saying that.

The Fed-Bagebook, by the way everyone, is like the Federal reserve goes out and surveys all of the

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