"Once every month, James Druckrey, marketing vice president of American Tourister Inc., sits down with top executives of the Warren, R.I., luggage maker to forecast the coming month's business.</br></br>For the past year, the very first item on his agenda has been the Conference Board's latest reading on consumer confidence. Right now, its reading is abysmal.</br></br>So, one would expect to find Mr. Druckrey pessimistic. But he isn't. ""We're guardedly optimistic there will be some turnaround in the economy,"" he says.</br></br>Production planners in businesses around the country are facing the same paradox: Business seems to be turning up, but some closely watched measures of consumer confidence aren't.</br></br>Last week, the Conference Board, a business-research organization based in New York, said its confidence index had fallen to the lowest level since the bleak, oil-shock days of December 1974. In short order, stock prices sank; Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan pronounced the report ""very disturbing""; USA Today and the Washington Post put the bad news at the top of their front pages, and CBS made it the lead story on its evening news."