In the currency market, the dollar sank against the euro. Late Friday, the euro was trading at $1.2587 vs. $1.2453 on Thursday. There were no hard economic numbers out on Friday. The major news item seems to have been the belief that President-elect Obama intends to name New York Fed President Tim Geithner as Treasury Secretary.

Chris Rupkey, senior economist at The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi in New York, represented general market sentiment as he hailed the selection: “A fantastic choice to help lead the financial markets out of the wilderness,” Rupkey said. “A crisis manager par excellence who will hit the ground running as he has been on the case since the global funding crisis began way back in July 2007.”

We’ll have to wait and see whether having a key Fed official proves a smart choice to be in charge of the bailout, but at this point even Joe the Plumber seems like a better option than Goldman’s Hank Paulson, who now seems merely confused.

And speaking of Goldman Sachs, economists at the investment bank forecast that the U.S. unemployment rate will reach 9%, from 6.5% currently, by the end of 2009, and that the economy will shrink in each quarter until mid-2009.

If unemployment does go that high, it would be “unequivocally the worst single downturn on record since World War II,” Goldman’s analysts wrote.

Source: Dollar lower against euro - Goldman predicts 9% unemployment.