Each Friday, members of our Bespoke subscription services receive our Week in Review newsletter.  This report provides Bespoke's current market thoughts through commentary and the unique graphs and charts that our clients have come to love.  If you're looking to get a better grasp of the market, subscribe to one of our membership packages today and download our Week in Review newsletter. In this week's newsletter:

Economic data was mostly disappointing last week, indicating more sluggish growth. The positives included blowout auto and light truck sales, an increase in the pending home sales index, and another slight decline in initial weekly unemployment claims. However the ISM manufacturing index was weaker than expected, personal income and spending growth was sluggish in January, construction spending declined slightly and durable goods orders declined sharply (a combination of fewer airplane sales and the expiration of the investment tax credit).

Over the past several decades, the World Bank has broadened its approach to growth and poverty reduction by moving beyond hard infrastructure initiatives to systemic reforms in education and health care and the development of social safety nets.

I visited my dentist last week, and he told me business has been picking up. This article from Kelly Evans and Erika Santoro at CNBC reminded me of his comments: Introducing: The Dentist Economic Indicator Want to know how the economy’s doing? Ask your dentist. That’s how we recently discovered one hopeful sign for the labor market: an increase in new dental patients. Our Manhattan-based dentist said he was seeing about three new patients a day in recent weeks, up from one or two on average last year.