The October employment report came in weaker than expected as the country lost 190,000 jobs, rather than the 175,000 expectation. It was, however, an improvement over the 219,000 lost in September, but worse than the 154,000 jobs lost in August. Both the September and August job losses were revised sharply lower. As of last month it was thought that we lost 263,000 jobs in September and 201,000 in August. So in that context, missing expectations for October by 15,000 does not seem that bad. Of course, it is bad if you happen to be one of those losing your job. Based on the establishment survey we have now lost 7.3 million jobs since the recession started.

In general though, the pace of job losses has been slowing, especially if you step back and look at the big picture. Over the last three months, the economy has been dropping an average of

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Chinese stocks rise 5%! Risk Assets follow! OECD forecasts faster global rowth…Gold & Silver kicking sand again! And Now… Today’s Pfennig!

Good day… And a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday to you! Let’s hope it remains a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday later today, as I head downtown to watch my beloved Cardinals play a day game! For those of you who are baseball fans, you know what I mean when I carry on about how baseball should only be played during the day!

OK… Before I get to the currencies, economies and the dolts in the world, I wanted to briefly talk

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Angela Merkel is about as gracious as they come.  During the Danzig Summit, there seemed no crime of WWII that she was unwilling to accept responsibility for:  "I pay tribute to the 60m people who lost their lives in this war unleashed by Germany."Merkel's encompassing and compassionate speech was important and underrated, perhaps even taken for granted given the tidy (and deserved) historical dustbin that the Third Reich has been consigned to.  Vladimir Putin, though his comments to Gazeta Wyborcza were commendably open, did not see any reason to go quite so far to denounce the conduct of Joseph Stalin, as he doesn't believe that the Russian leader should occupy that same category as Hitler in our collective ...

“They were hunters. They stayed here during the Ice Age, probably hunting reindeer,” said the archaeologist in charge of the site. “But who were they?”

“They were Cro-Magnon…they were like us…human. They wore jewelry. They drew pictures. They cooked meat. And they used this cave over a period of 30,000 years…”

Yesterday afternoon, we drove up the valley to a limestone cave owned by friends. There, a group of 20 scientists, archeologists and volunteer workers are digging down through 30,000 years of history, about 20 feet worth of dirt, rock and sediment, 5 centimeters at a time.

We’ll come back to the pre-historic world in a minute. First, let’s catch up on what is going on in the world of finance, right now.

Yesterday, most of the news and commentaries concerned either the death of Edward Kennedy or the life of Ben Bernanke. We do not speak ill of dead, not here at The

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In June, the economy dropped 467,000 jobs, bringing the official (U-3) unemployment rate up to 9.5%, its highest level since the recession of the early 1980's. In some ways this was a mirror image of the May report, which featured a relatively small decline in jobs (-322,000 revised from an original read of -345,000) but a big jump in the U-3 unemployment rate to 9.4% from 8.9% in April.June had a much bigger-than-expected loss of jobs (consensus was -367,000), but only a small 0.1% rise in the unemployment rate. The more comprehensive U-6 unemployment rate, which counts discouraged workers and those working part-time because they can't find full time jobs, also rose by 0.1% to 16.5%. A year ago the U-6 rate was 10.1%, so it is up 6.4 points, vs. a 3.9 point rise in the U-3 rate over the last year.The chart below ...

Bernie Madoff and his Finacial Crime.

Let the punishment fit the crime!

Poor Bernie. The man has been ordered to spend 150 years in the hoosegow. What for? Who did he kill? A century-and-a-half seems a little excessive for a financial crime. You could hold up three liquor stores and rape a whole convent and still not get 150 years. With a little good lawyering, a history of child abuse in the family and good behavior in the big house, you’d be back on the street in 18 months.

But all the papers seem delighted. “Locked up for Life!” says one of today’s headlines. The judge “threw the book at him,” says another. His victims wanted him to get no mercy. The judge gave him none, imposing the maximum sentence. He is “extraordinarily evil,” said the man on the bench.

Justice has been done. Right?

Here in the building with the gold balls, we’re not

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