Initial claims for unemployment insurance dropped to 550,000, a decline of 26,000 from an upwardly revised total of 576,000 last week, providing a net improvement of 20,000. The four-week moving average fell by 2,750 to 570,000. As you can see in the chart below (from http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/), we are well off the highs set back in April. But after a rapid improvement in May and June, progress has seemed to come to a halt. We are most likely moving to the plateau stage that we experienced following the last two recessions. In both of those cases, initial claims stayed at an elevated level, but off their highs for well after a year past the official end of the recession. While it is nice to be almost 90,000 lower than at the peak, a level of 570,000, or even 550,000, is not good enough. A year ago we were at ...

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Chicago, IL – August 21, 2009 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Kroger (KR), Citigroup (C), Bank of America (BAC), Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE).

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Here are highlights from Thursday’s Analyst Blog:

New Jobless Claims Disappoint

According to the National Unemployment Law project, 500,000 people will exhaust their extended benefits by the end of September, and 1.5 million will do so by the end of the year. With the extensions, these folks have been out of work for well over

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Initial claims for unemployment insurance rose to 576,000, an increase of 15,000. This was in stark contrast to the expected decline to the 550,000 level. The four-week moving average rose by 4,250 to 570,000. This is the second week in a row it has risen. To be sure, we are well below (by 89,000) the peak levels set back in mid-April, and it seems unlikely to me that we will surpass that level in this cycle. Historically, a peak in the four week average of initial claims has coincided with the end of recessions. It appears that we are starting the pattern we saw in the last two recessions (see graph from http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/ below) where rather than coming straight down off the peak, there is an initial decline and an uneven jagged plateau after the peak. In the recessions of the 1970’s and the 1980’s after the ...

Tighter credit for farmers could worsen a global food crisis as smaller crop sizes cause prices to soar. Many farmers have traditionally bought pre-season supplies such as seeds and fertilizer on credit and then paid off the debt with the proceeds from the year’s harvest. But with a growing number of farmers unable to obtain the credit they need, crop yields will suffer.

Global wheat production will likely be 4.4% less next year, Dan Basse, president of AgResource Co. in Chicago, told Bloomberg News. Basse believes the world’s corn and soybean crops will also see declines.

“The credit situation is worrying even the biggest and best farmers,” Brian Willot, a former University of Missouri commodity analyst who now grows soybeans in Brazil, told Bloomberg. “For the financially weak, credit has dried up completely. For the strong, credit has been delayed and interest rates are

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Tighter credit for farmers could worsen a global food crisis as smaller crop sizes cause prices to soar. Many farmers have traditionally bought pre-season supplies such as seeds and fertilizer on credit and then paid off the debt with the proceeds from the year’s harvest. But with a growing number of farmers unable to obtain the credit they need, crop yields will suffer. Global wheat production will likely be 4.4% less next year, Dan Basse, president of AgResource Co. in Chicago, told Bloomberg News. Basse believes the world’s corn and soybean crops will also see declines. “The credit situation is worrying even the biggest and best farmers,” Brian Willot, a former University of Missouri commodity analyst who now grows soybeans in Brazil, told Bloomberg. “For the financially weak, credit has dried up completely. For the strong, credit has been delayed and ...