CNN Money is running an interesting feature by David Goldman entitled "10 countries, 10 solutions" which details the particularities of the global economic crisis facing 10 key countries. In typical old-media fashion, the layout makes no sense from a user-friendliness perspective, so I'm going to take significant liberties in reposting their original content. They also have a single table layout of the 10 countries here. Time Warner lawyers, if you're watching this, get your editorial guys to put their content into a more sensible format that doesn't require constant clicking and I won't have to go such lengths to discuss it and in turn will actually drive more traffic to your site. Got that? Good. Now then, first some

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New claims for unemployment insurance rose last week to 584,000 -- an increase of 25,000. However, the 4-week moving average of this volatile series fell to 559,000, a decline of 8,250. As the chart below (from http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/) shows, the 4-week average looks to be well past its peak both in terms of time (16 weeks) and level (almost 100,000 below peak levels). This is significant in that it makes it increasingly unlikely that April was a false peak. Also, note the relationship of past peaks to the blue recession bars. Historically, peaks in the 4-week average of new claims have come close to or at the end of recessions. As the experience of the last two recessions shows, though, it is not always a smooth decline, and the 4-week average can rise again, but as long as it doesn’t hit a new high for the cycle, ...

Avery Goodman

On Tuesday morning, gold derivatives dealers, who had sold short in the face of a fast rising gold price, faced a serious predicament. Some 27,000 + contracts, representing about 15% of the April COMEX gold futures contracts remained open. Technically, short sellers are required to give “notice” of delivery to long buyers. However, in reality, buyers are the ones who control the amount of gold to be delivered. They “demand” delivery of physical gold by holding futures contracts past the expiration date. This time, long buyers were demanding in droves.

In normal times, very few people do this. Only about 1% or less of gold contracts must be delivered. The lack of delivery demand allows the casino-like world of paper gold futures contracts to operate. Very few short sellers actually expect or intend to deliver real gold. They are, mostly, merely playing with paper. It was amazing, therefore, when March

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Another day…another bailout…another rally on Wall Street… And another milestone on the road to ruin.

“Geithner plan welcomed,” says the headline story in today’s Financial Times.

“Stocks rally on news of toxic assets proposal,” continues the commentary.

Stocks did indeed rally. The Dow rose 497 points…putting some bounce back in the bounce. We’ve been expecting a healthy rebound. Normally, after such a long and steep sell-off, you can expect a rebound that recovers 30%-50% of the losses. We have not had such a rebound…yet. Maybe this is it.

Otherwise, the financial news is mixed. House sales in February were unexpectedly high. Then again, prices continued to fall.

AMEX looks like it is going to be downgraded…as credit card debt now looks as though it could be heading in a subprime direction.

The dollar continues to fall, (to $1.36 yesterday) and gold continues to stay in the same place – around $950.

But let’s focus on the big

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I am spending the next few days in Europe on a short business trip. First stop is Dublin where the temperature is icy, the mood is dour, property prices are plunging, the queues for jobless claims are five hours long, the soon-to-be-unemployed are holding protest strikes, and the banks are on the edge of a financial precipice. Yes, it may be a movie with different actors, but the plot is the same as in many other countries.

Meanwhile in the US, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner yesterday disappointed the markets with the lack of detail on the administration’s Financial Stability Plan. After all, he did say a few days ago (paraphrasing): ” We are not going to put out the details of our plan until we get it right.” (Please click

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by Edward Hugh: Barcelonabr /br /Spain’s economy is now most evidently, and totally and completely officially, in its first recession since 1993. The final confirmation of this came yesterday when the Bank of Spain released a href=”http://www.bde.es/informes/be/boleco/2009jan/coye.pdf”its quarterly report/a on the Spanish economy. According to the bank, gross domestic product fell by 1.1% in the final quarter of 2008 (over the previous quarter), following a 0.2% decline in the third quarter. GDP fell year on year by 0.8%.br /br /br /br /pa href=”http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SYGrCxKfh7I/AAAAAAAAMaY/mL2jc8×2bF4/s1600-h/spain+GDP.png”img id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5296702700809848754″ style=”DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 192px; TEXT-ALIGN: center” alt=”" src=”http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SYGrCxKfh7I/AAAAAAAAMaY/mL2jc8×2bF4/s400/spain+GDP.png” border=”0″ //abr /Basically the report confirms a href=”http://spaineconomy.blogspot.com/2008/12/as-spanish-unemployment-rises-sharply.html”my analysis in this post/a which suggested that while technically speaking the recession started on 1 July 2008, the contraction really started in July/August 2007, and it should have been really obvious to everyone by September of that year that the party was …

The IMF Senior Regional Representative For Central Europe and the Baltics, Christoph Rosenberg, recently a href="http://www.rgemonitor.com/euro-monitor/254975/why_the_imf_supports_the_latvian_currency_peg"took me to task on RGE Monitor about my Latvian devaluation proposal/a (as did a href="http://www.rgemonitor.com/economonitor-monitor/254905/devaluation_in_latvia_why_not"RGE's own Mary Stokes/a), and I would like now to take a closer look at some of the points they raise.br /br /In the first place, I would like to say that I obviously regard both Chrisoph and Mary as excellent economists, and I was in no way refering to them when I said that arguing in favour of sticking to the present currency peg constitutes trying to justify “virtually the unjustifiable” according to “the implicit consensus among thinking economists.” I do still hold that the consensus is with me, but that certainly does not mean I regard those who differ from me as "unthinking", and certainly hope I didn't give the impression that I was. And with that little ...

By Edward Hugh: Barcelonabr /br /The Italian economy continued to contract sharply in the third quarter of 2008 as exports fell sharply - declining at the fastest rate in three years - under the impact of a global slump which weighed down on foreign demand for Italian products, and pushed the Italian economy into its worst recession since at least 1975. Sales of Italian goods abroad fell 1.6 percent from the previous quarter, their biggest decline since 2005.br /br /Pressure is of course on the government to offer a fiscal reponse to the problem, but given Italy's outstanding debt issues and the fact that a large part of the problem is long term structural and not cyclical it is hard to see much of note happening, and indeed Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti's statement this week that additional stimulus packages were pretty pointless could be read as more of an admission ...

by Edward Hugh: Barcelonabr /br /br /blockquoteIn view of Greece's EMU membership, the availability of external financing is not a concern, but the correction of cumulating indebtedness could weigh appreciably on growth going forward. While the risk of transmitting vulnerabilities to the euro area is very small reflecting Greece’s small relative size, large persistent current account deficits would increase the vulnerabilities to a reversal in market sentiment, leading to a corrective retrenchment of private sector balance-sheets in the face of rising indebtedness, and a possible appreciable rise in the cost of funding over time. These developments would have significant negative implications for growth.br /a href="http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.cfm?sk=21937.0"Greece: 2007 Article IV Consultation/a - IMF Staff Report/blockquotepbr /br //ppa href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SUEsR712NQI/AAAAAAAALuU/VGFiqyCyzBw/s1600-h/bond+spreads+2.png"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5278548924887872770" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; HEIGHT: 170px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SUEsR712NQI/AAAAAAAALuU/VGFiqyCyzBw/s320/bond+spreads+2.png" border="0" //abr /The above quited paragraph from the IMF is a very good example of what used to be ...

Job market takes another turn for the worse… unemployment data at 26-year high… Government solution:spend… budget and trade deficits swell more than expected… Byron King on falling oil demand… and what it means for long-term investors… Gold soars… Ed Bugos with some fresh price targets… Signs of the times… Chinese bank opens in U.S., world’s biggest LBO collapses… Plus, Chris Mayer on the automaker bailout

Americans filed over 573,000 jobless claims last week — the most since 1982.

The Labor Dept. also said the number of people collecting unemployment reached a 26-year high too, 4,429,000.

Unfortunately, we’re just getting started if a study released this morning by UCLA is accurate. The Anderson School of Management predicts we will see negative GDP for the current and first two quarters of 2009… and the unemployment rate to

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