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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In the currency market, the dollar sank against the euro. Late Friday, the euro was trading at $1.2932 vs. $1.2861 on Thursday.

Yesterday came the grim jobs figures everyone was expecting. The Labor Department reported that non-farm payrolls fell by a seasonally adjusted 598,000 in January after a revised loss of 577,000 in December. That marked the largest payroll loss since December 1974.

At the same time, the unemployment rate soared to 7.6%, compared with 7.2% in December. That was even worse than already-pessimistic economists’ expectations for a rise to 7.5%, and is the highest unemployment rate since September 1992.

“These numbers are dreadful but does it matter?” asked Alan Ruskin of RBS Greenwich Capital. “No,” he wrote. “All the prior labor market indicators, notably the claims data, gave a feeling of foreboding before these numbers. The data broadly delivered.”

And Kathy Lien, director of currency research at GFT, pointed out “that traders

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The Markets await the Obama economic stimulus and bank rescue plans…  AngloPlat reports higher earnings but flags up cost fears… Johnson Matthey (JMAT) sees 2009 platinum demand declining 5 pct…

This from Reuters, London:

Gold fell nearly 2 percent in Europe on Monday as investors took profits after recent gains, amid disappointment the metal had failed to beat resistance near $930 an ounce last week.

Spot gold slipped to $895.65/897.65 an ounce at 1446 GMT, down from $911.70 in New York late on Friday. Earlier it touched a low of $893.15.

U.S. gold futures for April delivery on the COMEX division of the New York Mercantile Exchange fell $16.30 to $897.60 an ounce.

“There has been some profit taking and disappointment we couldn’t break through $930, even with strong demand from ETFs,” said Commerzbank senior trader Michael Kempinski.

Signs of a recovery in

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In the currency market, the dollar was off slightly against the euro. Late Wednesday, the euro was trading at $1.2872 vs. $1.2856 on Tuesday.

Sterling continued to take a pounding, so to speak, falling nearly to $1.36 before edging back over $1.37.

With the UK’s financial system in shambles, Bank of England Gov. Mervyn King said that the central bank is considering buying up a range of assets in the coming weeks, in an attempt to re-start stalled lending to businesses and households.

King also promised “quantitative easing” measures that could be used to boost the money supply (i.e., roll the printing presses), considering the economic contraction that threatens to push inflation below the central bank’s 2% target.

Back home, Timothy Geithner, Barack Obama’s embattled Treasury secretary-designate, told the Senate Finance Committee that the president is working on a comprehensive bank-rescue package that will be unveiled in the next few weeks.

Geithner refused

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by Edward Hugh: Barlecona br /br /br /Only one thing is really clear about the Germany economy at the present time, and that is that it is shrinking rapidly. In fact it contracted far more than most analysts and observers expected in the third quarter (although I, for one, a href="http://www.rgemonitor.com/euro-monitor/252923/what_is_the_recession_risk_for_the_german_economy"was not especially surprised/a), entering what now appears to be its worst recession in at least 12 years as both exports and domestic spending continue to fall. German gross domestic product in Q3 dropped by a seasonally adjusted 0.5 percent from the second quarter, when it fell by a quarterly 0.4 percent, according to revised data from the Federal Statistics Office. The Germany economy last had a two quarter contraction of this magnitude back in 1996.br /br /br /pa href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SRwqCqomolI/AAAAAAAALd8/hUkBJVBg6wg/s1600-h/GDP+y-o-y.png"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5268131889409335890" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 198px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SRwqCqomolI/AAAAAAAALd8/hUkBJVBg6wg/s320/GDP+y-o-y.png" border="0" //abr /br ...

As every woman who has ever had dealings with a man knows only too well, it is a lot easier for people to make promises than it is for them to keep them. And when Europe's leaders met in Paris on the 12 October, a lot of fine promises (which were all, surely, very well intentioned) were made. The reality of having to live up to them, however, is turning out, as might only have been expected, to be much more complicated.Basically, the kernel of the plan which is now being operationalised seems to have been thrashed out in Washington on 11 October, when key G7 leaders met with Dominique Strauss Kahn of the IMF, and it was decided to try and erect two great firewalls (corta fuegos) - at least as far as Europe is concerned. One of these was to be co-ordinated by the EU governments, ...

by Edward Hugh: BarcelonaWell the action in Russia this week has moved on slightly, and the damage has started to spread from pressure on the domestic stock market (accompanied by capital flight) to the real economy - via a very rapid tightening in credit conditions for Russian domestic users. We are also seeing a rapid slowdown in Russian manufacturing industry as internal demand slows while the inflation-driven decline in cost competitiveness continues to make imported products (where available) an attractive alternative to the home produced variant.Emerging-market bonds have been generally falling this week as the U.S. Senate's approval of a $700 billion bank rescue package did little to revive demand for riskier debt, and Russia has, unsurprisingly, been among the worst affected. The extra yield investors demand to own developing-nation bonds rather than U.S. Treasuries rose 8 basis points yestreday to 4.14 percentage points after widening ...

by Edward Hugh: BarcelonaWell the action in Russia this week has moved on slightly, and the damage has started to spread from pressure on the domestic stock market (accompanied by capital flight) to the real economy - via a very rapid tightening in credit conditions for Russian domestic users. We are also seeing a rapid slowdown in Russian manufacturing industry as internal demand slows while the inflation-driven decline in cost competitiveness continues to make imported products (where available) an attractive alternative to the home produced variant.Emerging-market bonds have been generally falling this week as the U.S. Senate's approval of a $700 billion bank rescue package did little to revive demand for riskier debt, and Russia has, unsurprisingly, been among the worst affected. The extra yield investors demand to own developing-nation bonds rather than U.S. Treasuries rose 8 basis points yestreday to 4.14 percentage points after widening ...