Editor's Choice: Week of May 4, 2009

On Monday May 4, the Census Bureau is scheduled to release its monthly report on construction spending, revealing figures for March. The last release noted a decline of 0.9% for February. The new numbers are expected to show a decline of 1.3% with a similar figure for pending home sales. This release will revise unadjusted and seasonally adjusted data back to January 2007.

There are a number of Senate committee hearings of note this week. On Wednesay May 7, the Senator Chris Dodd’s Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee is holding hearing to examine “regulating and resolving institutions considered to be too big to fail.” The next day the Committee’s Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance and Investment will hold hearings to examine ways to strengthen the SEC’s enforcement responsibilities.

That’s the same day the Energy and Natural Resources Subcommittee onEnergy will hold hearings to examine ways “to improve grid reliability, increase clean energy deployment, enable consumer choice, and diversify our nation’s energy supply,” all of which are topics of interest to advisors whose clients take a green approach to investing.