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Real Story: Economic Realities

TSC Staff

On a day when worries about economy growth hit major averages, Stephen Hanks, CEO of Washington Group International (WNG) told Aaron Task a much more upbeat story on Tuesday's Real Story podcast.

Washington Group, a major construction and engineering firm, is seeing "tremendous growth" in all six of its market segments, says Hanks, citing notable opportunities in the energy market. "We've very excited." (The entire interview can be seen here on TheStreet.com TV.)

The CEO's remarks came on a day when the Dow and S&P 500 each fell 0.6% and the Nasdaq Composite lost 0.7%, a decline paced by economically sensitive stocks such as DuPont (DD), Ingersoll-Rand (IR), Microsoft (MSFT) and Citigroup (C).

The selloff followed a weaker-than-expected report on consumer confidence, as well as a lackluster earnings report from homebuilder Lennar (LEN), which also backed off the earnings target it had provided in January.

Task's second guest, TheStreet.com real estate reporter Nick Yulico, discussed the implications of Lennar's results as well as Standard & Poor's report that home prices fell 0.2% in January in the 20 largest metro areas of the country, based on the S&P Case-Shiller Index.

Yulico observed there may be "too much data" about housing but the figure that matters most, inventories, is on the rise in both the recent existing and new-home-sales data.

In the remainder of the podcast, Task addresses the day's other corporate news, noting many of the session's stock-specific stories were big gainers, including GameStop (GME), Nuvelo (NUVO) and FuelCell Energy (FCEL).

In addition, "The Real Story" host previewed Wednesday's congressional testimony by Ben Bernanke, recalling the Federal Reserve chairman has recently had a "salutary effect" on stocks when he speaks.

Click here to listen to the entire podcast.