Since there is little by way of economic data releases this week, there is no text for this week's economic calendar.  Weekly jobless claims and existing home sales for December will be released on Thursday.  The pending home sales data (which have provided a good indication of existing home sales in recent months) point to a moderate decline in existing home sales in December, which we see down 1.0% to 4.95 million units from 5.00 million units in the prior month.  The sharp drop in initial jobless claims in the last three weeks may be the result of the usual turn-of-the-year volatility and we look for a 19,000 increase in claims to 320,000 in the week ending January 19th.

Please find attached the table for our weekly economic calendar.