Away from autos, the economy is growing at a steady, lackluster pace. It's just kind of slow and steady and not very exciting.

When you look at the two numbers together, overall orders are up about 4.2 percent, or 2.1 percent per month. That's not a stellar performance, but [it's] also much better than the market thought.

There's been continued resilience among consumers. And manufacturers are having to produce things to meet that demand.

This says businesses are gradually, grudgingly putting money to work. They're still being cautious, but not as cautious as the data before this morning would have suggested.

The economy has clearly downshifted in the fourth quarter from its third-quarter pace.

We're going to get some weak numbers. The ISM report is going to be weak and that we're in store for a labor report that's weaker than what we've seen over the past four or five months.