If Crude oil Breaks Through $53, It’s a Screaming Buy

Dear Value Seeker,

America’s job losses have come into sharp focus again today.

The New York Times calls it a “rising tide.” It’s more like a tsunami…

Initial jobless claims for the week ended January 17 shot up by 62,000 to 589,000. This is the highest weekly rise in unemployment since November 1982.

Meanwhile, Microsoft ensured an abrupt reversal of yesterday’s stock market rally by warning that it was “not immune” to the recession.

The tech giant also announced it would give 5,000 workers their marching orders, including 1,400 today.

Microsoft joins a long and growing list of blue chips that have announced job cuts in 2009.

It’s a list The Wall Street Journal’s Real Time Economics blog is tracking:

EV Transportation is a unique car rental company in that it is the only truly environmentally-friendly group of its kind, solely offering electric and low-emission vehicles. EV is currently in the process of positioning itself for intense growth in a rapidly evolving sector of the car rental industry. As of 2007, the industry as a whole logged revenues of roughly $21 billion, more than ninety percent of which was generated by the following four top players: Enterprise (including recently acquired Alamo and National brands), Avis Budget Group, Hertz Global Holdings, and the Dollar Thrifty Group. With the exception of Hertz, each of these ownership groups resulted from the merger of two or more major rental brands.

EV Transport operates in the independent portion of the rental industry, comprising just seven percent of the whole, yet generating annual revenues of over one-and-a-half billion dollars