If, as a trader, you were to read every item of economic information that passed over your desk you'd never actually have the time to do a deal.

Many economic releases pass by virtually unnoticed by most people in the market, some are temporarily in vogue but lose their appeal after a while and very few are the kind of numbers that you make sure you're sitting at your desk for every month. However, people were certainly sitting at their desks for some of the more recent releases.

The publication of the Beige Book in the States occurs too late in the day to be of much use to European traders but, because it gives an insight into the state of the US economy and the mindset of the Federal Reserve, it is a report which is nearly always keenly awaited.

According to this month's report, manufacturing was weaker, retail sales were lacklustre and car sales were substantially slower.

The University of Michigan releases a consumer confidence index which is considered a key indicator. This has fallen sharply and is now running at levels last seen in 1996. But the number that stunned most market participants last week was the Philly Fed survey (carried out by the Philadelphia federal reserve hence the name) which showed an astonishing fall in confidence.

Since Philadelphia is the third largest industrial region in the States, a fall to -36.8 from -4.2 (the lowest level in 10 years) was one of earth-shattering proportions. Although many people are suggesting that, as the survey was carried out before the Fed's emergency rate cut, confidence may have rebounded since then, it's still a number that will overhang the market for some time.

And although the initial flip side was higher equity prices on the back of further forecasted rate cuts, it looks as though both bond and equity markets are getting themselves into a twist as they try to guess and second guess both the Fed's intentions and the next economic survey.

Meanwhile, as the new US President gets to grip with his first week in office, his fellow Americans on the west coast must be feeling under the cosh. If it wasn't bad enough that Silicon Valley is being battered by tech weakness and job losses, California has been suffering from an electricity shortage since the beginning of December.

Earlier last month it declared what's known as a "Stage Three" alert which meant a variety of measures to conserve electricity were put in place.

For example, older generating plants were allowed to run at levels which could cause additional air pollution while rare salmon were in danger from extra water which could be diverted through hydroelectric dams. Oh, and the lights were switched off too.

The whole mess has happened because of electricity deregulation back in 1998. At that time, prices were left partially fixed while local utilities built up financial strength. This was not initially as mad as it sounds - Californian electricity companies were able to buy in surplus power cheaply and profited as a result.

However, the oil price hikes of last year threw a major spanner in the works because the companies now have to pay the going rate for the power (which can increase thousandfolds during peak operating hours) but the price to the consumer must remain unchanged. The result, naturally enough, has been blackouts in the Golden State.

Legislators have now approved emergency spending of around $400 million so that the largest utilities (Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison) can buy in some power but it's not the sort of situation in which either the State or the utility companies need to find themselves.

Both PG&E and Edison, who will be bankrupt by February, have been downgraded to D (which, unsurprisingly, means defaulters) by the ratings agencies. And, of course, when they start defaulting on their debt then the question of creditworthiness of the corporate sector comes into the frame again along with questions about the vulnerability of the banking system.

It's bad enough that the banks are being toasted by high-techs, but being toasted by the electricity companies is something new for them.

The other worrying aspect is that many US municipal funds bought debt issued by both of these utilities which they regarded as risk free. There's no such thing as risk free in corporate paper.

It's interesting, isn't it, how a catalogue of problems can manage to pile up until the entire picture looks catastrophic? Tony Blair managed (in a fashion) to ride out the storms, floods and rail disasters before Christmas which had most of Fleet Street saying that the UK government had lost its way and that Britain was on the verge of collapse.

It'll be interesting to see how George W copes with Americans who can't turn on the lights and whose jobs are looking less secure than they were 12 months ago. But more important than President Bush's reaction, of course, is that of the markets.

Power cuts and the demise of civilisation as we know it (or at least in Hollywood) aren't exactly on the credit side of the markets' ledger books. Traders have turned on other countries for less.

That is, of course, if they're motivated enough to trade. I read at the weekend that some bond traders and salesmen (I do hope they mean salespeople) at Merrill Lynch are threatening to leave the company following bonus payments which are substantially down on last year. The major complaint seems to be that a senior team of people divvied up most of the money while others in the bond department lost out.

That certainly brought me back. Waiting for the world's most important economic figure is nothing compared with waiting for news of the annual bonus. I remember fondly all those times I strolled into the little room designated by the Head of Bonds for the end-year chat and discussion about why the dosh was always somewhat less than I hoped. And I remember with equal fondness the hours afterwards when I sat in the pub with colleagues while we muttered that another division or another sector or a cabal of senior management had once again creamed off the best of the cash and left us with the skimmed milk.

Like everything, bonds have their good years and their bad. Given the turnaround in sentiment last year, new issues were down so it probably wasn't a great year. Swings and roundabouts, of course. But it's always frustrating to be on the swings when the roundabouts are where the action is.