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In the currency market, the dollar got slapped down against the euro. Late Tuesday, the euro was trading at $1.3644 vs. $1.3589 on Monday.

The buck is getting hit by the spreading, and probably wishful, thinking that an economic upturn is just around the corner, depriving the currency of its appeal as a safe haven in rotten times.

Many see the decline as short-lived. “We have warned that the current period of vulnerability for the buck could go on for several weeks, but at some point, it will all come back to relative growth rates, which gives the U.S. a distinct advantage over the longer term,” wrote strategists at Brown Brothers Harriman.

The Commerce Department reported that both imports and exports declined in March, with the former exceeding the latter, so that the trade deficit widened by 5.5% to $27.6 billion in March from a nine-year low of $26.1 billion in February.

MarketWatch.com

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In the currency market, the dollar crashed against the euro. Late Friday, the euro was trading at $1.3627 vs. $1.3403 on Thursday.

The Labor Department’s unemployment figures were the most anticipated data of the day, and they came in gloomy indeed.

Labor said that, in April, there were 539,000 jobs lost, while the unemployment rate skied to 8.9%, the highest level in 26 years. Dreadful by any standard, yet it was an improvement, representing an easing in the pace of massive job destruction that had averaged 680,000 over the previous five months.

In addition, job losses for February and March were revised higher by a combined total of 66,000.

“It is a sobering toll,” said President Barak Obama. “We’re still in the midst of a recession that was years in the making and will be months or even years in the unmaking; and we should expect further job losses in the months to

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Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda will spend about $108 billion (11.7 trillion yen) on a stimulus package that critics say is more of an attempt to salvage political support than it is a serious effort to rescue an economy teetering on the brink of recession. While the plan is being spun as a life preserver for Japanese consumers and businesses struggling with high food and energy costs, it includes just $18 billion (2 trillion yen) in new spending. Most of the package will be allocated to loan guarantees for small and medium-sized businesses and will not necessarily translate into bottom line growth. "The program earmarks 2 trillion yen in real spending, but probably barely half of it will contribute to boost [gross domestic product (GDP)]," Kyohei Morita, chief economist at Barclays Capital (ADR: BCS) in Tokyo, told Bloomberg News. "The ...