By Don Miller Associate Editor Money Morning

U.S. retail sales rose unexpectedly in October as vehicle sales rebounded from a deep slump. However, non-auto sales rose less than forecast, suggesting consumers remain cautious as unemployment surges amid a “jobless recovery.”

Sales at the nation’s retail outlets increased 1.4%, the Commerce Department said today (Monday), much better than the 0.9% increase projected by the median estimate of 66 economists in a Bloomberg News survey. But September sales were revised downwards to a 2.3% decrease from the previous estimate of a 1.5% decline.

Aside from automobiles, other sales rose just 0.2%. That increase marked the third month in a row that sales rose, but failed to meet the 0.4% climb economists had predicted.

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“Words from the Wise” this week comes to you in a shortened format as I do not have access to my normal research resources while on the road in Europe (also see my post “Gone A.W.O.L. - to Slovenia and Switzerland“). Although very little commentary is provided, a full dose of excerpts from interesting news items and quotes from market commentators is included.

While investors’ hopes of an economic recovery might have got ahead of reality, the cartoonists continually reminded us of worrisome issues …

Source: Signe Wilkinson, Washington Post,  June 18, 2009.

The past week’s performance of the major asset classes is summarized by the chart below - a mixed bag so to speak.

Source: StockCharts.com

A summary of

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Those elusive “green shoots” that economic optimists had been digging up lately were buried under disappointing data from the Commerce Department in Washington yesterday (Wednesday) when it was revealed that retail sales in the unexpectedly dropped in April.

Sales at U.S. retailers dropped 0.4%, the eighth monthly decline in the last 10 months, following a revised 1.3% drop in March that was larger than previously estimated.  Excluding auto dealers, sales fell 0.5%

Economists had expected an increase of 0.5% to 1.0%.  Since July, retail sales have shown increases only in January and February, and those were attributed to post-holiday sales.

The disappointing numbers indicate surging unemployment and the worst housing market in decades could temper consumers’ appetite for spending for years, analysts said. As long as consumer spending is muted, which accounts for about 70% of all economic activity, any recovery from the worst recession in over 50 years is likely to

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I think it’s about time for a compelling argument that the stock market could be making a turn around…right? Well like it or not Chrisopher Hill, editor of Investorazzi.com, has come to make an argument that he’ll be defending in the comments section! So if you think otherwise tell him why!

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Equities have been on a roll these past two months. On Monday, the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, which is a meaningful benchmark to investors because it generally reflects the movements of the U.S. stock market as a whole,  reached a four-month high to close at 907.  The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index also has been on a tear, finishing Monday at 1,763— up 11% for the year.

At this point, many traders and investors are asking, is the current rally in equities sustainable?  Or, are U.S. stocks about the make a U-turn and head south?

Recently, a couple of legendary

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“Goodbye safe havens, hello risky assets.” This was the refrain of investors’ theme song during the past week. Safe-haven assets were out of favor as better-than-feared corporate earnings and signs of a budding economic recovery emboldened investors’ appetite for reflation trades such as equities and commodities.

Investors’ sentiment improved notwithstanding a number of influences that could potentially disturb financial markets. These included a three-day delay in the release of the stress test results of the 19 biggest US banks until May 7, the plight of the beleaguered US automakers with General Motors (GM) proposing a sweeping debt-for-equity restructuring and Chrysler filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and fears of an escalation in the number of swine flu (H1N1) cases.

Source: Vita

As to be expected given the countless catalysts, the past week’s trading was bumpy, but the major

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by Edward Hugh: Barcelonabr /br /According to Deputy Economic Development Minister Andrei Klepach last week, Russia's economy shrank by 7 percent year on year in the first quarter of 2009, a staggering turnaround for an economy which has just enjoyed eight years of solid oil-fueled growth.br /br /"These figures are worse than we expected," Klepach said at a press conference in Kiev,citing preliminary figures. Klepach also stated that net capital outflows reached $33 billion in the first quarter of 2009, following record outflows of $130 billion in the second half of last year.br /br /pa href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SdsTJmo57XI/AAAAAAAANbI/gYR1beR2NiI/s1600-h/russia+gdp.png"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5321868440380239218" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 229px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SdsTJmo57XI/AAAAAAAANbI/gYR1beR2NiI/s400/russia+gdp.png" border="0" //abr /br /The Russian State Statistics Service have also released official gross domestic product figures for the fourth quarter of 2008. GDP was up 1.2 percent year on year, the worst reading for any quarter since ...

In sports, championship-caliber teams all have at least one characteristic in common: They’re able to focus on the fundamentals.

With the U.S. unemployment rate jumping to its highest level  in a quarter century in February, it’s become abundantly clear that that the U.S. recession is much deeper than President Barack Obama anticipated, meaning it’s likely that additional measures will be undertaken to arrest the slide and restart growth.

Many experts are now calling for the Obama administration to focus on the fundamentals – fundamental economics, that is. They want him to drop some of its ancillary pet projects – such as healthcare reform – and are telling President Obama to focus all his time and the government’s resources on three things:

Arresting the economy’s slide. Hastening its subsequent rebound. And fixing the U.S. banking system.

A focus on anything else is just a diversion and is a waste of time – especially because  there are

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In sports, championship-caliber teams all have at least one characteristic in common: They’re able to focus on the fundamentals. With the U.S. unemployment rate jumping to its highest level  in a quarter century in February, it’s become abundantly clear that that the U.S. recession is much deeper than President Barack Obama anticipated, meaning it’s likely that additional measures will be undertaken to arrest the slide and restart growth. Many experts are now calling for the Obama administration to focus on the fundamentals – fundamental economics, that is. They want him to drop some of its ancillary pet projects – such as healthcare reform – and are telling President Obama to focus all his time and the government’s resources on three things: Arresting the economy’s slide. Hastening its subsequent rebound. And fixing the U.S. banking system. A focus on anything else is just a diversion and is a ...

While the stock market indices are floundering with multi-year lows, “nationalization” was the key word spooking investor sentiment during the past few days.

Also on the video front, “hot-under-the-collar” discussions, featuring James Galbraith, Sheila Bair, Marc Gaber, Nouriel Roubini, Nassim Taleb and Richard Bove, took place on whether or not to nationalize large US banks.

David Reilly (Bloomberg) added the following perspective: “The nationalization debate is a smoke screen. We’ve already nationalized the big banks. Let’s just accept it and move on”. From across the pond, David Fuller said: “Politically … this is a case of [even more] damned if you do [than] damned if you don’t.”

In lighter vein, this week’s compilation

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German unemployment rose again in February but new government job protection measures appeared to be paying off, as the increase was lower than predictetd by economists. Data released from the Federal Labour Agency on Thursday showed that the jobless total increased by 40,000 jobs in February (to 3.31 million), on a seasonally adjusted basis, pushing the adjusted unemployment rate from 7.8 per cent to 7.9 per cent, marking an acceleration of the deterioration in labour market conditions since December.br /br /a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SabDiud893I/AAAAAAAAM1E/jk6cWajOOzU/s1600-h/germany+unemployment.png"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5307144212259338098" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 236px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SabDiud893I/AAAAAAAAM1E/jk6cWajOOzU/s400/germany+unemployment.png" border="0" //abr /As reported by the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) on the basis of first calculations, the number of persons in employment whose place of residence was in Germanyamounted to 39.83 million in January 2009. Hence, the number of persons in employment fell below the 40 million threshold again for ...