In the currency market, the dollar firmed for a third straight day against the euro. Late Thursday, the euro was trading at $1.5501 vs. $1.564 on Wednesday.

Dan Amoss thinks he’s found the next culprit. And this isn’t just a gut feeling, there’s real evidence here. Is the worst behind us? Dan doesn’t thinks so.

So far, the Fed’s magic is working: Sub-prime is leaving primetime.

Since the beginning of the subprime crisis last July, financial companies around the world have fired a total of 83,000 workers, sparking fears that the global recession could be worse than expected. This from Bloomberg:

It’s as if the entire workforce at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley vanished in less than a year.

From Tokyo to London to New York, financial companies announced plans to shed more than 83,000 jobs since last July as revenue and compensation pools evaporated, according to figures compiled by Bloomberg.

The Home Depot Inc. (HD) reported a 66% decline in first-quarter net earnings, the result of what Chief Executive Officer Francis Blake called “worsened” housing and home improvement markets.

Former Fed chief Paul Volcker has warned that the Fed’s recent use of “long-dormant” powers may set a dangerous precedent for the future, causing “market participants” to factor another Fed bailout into their increasingly reckless trading strategies.

“Whatever claims might be made about the uniqueness of current circumstances, it seems inevitable that the nature of the Fed’s response will be taken into account and be anticipated, by officials and market participants alike, in similar future circumstances,” Volcker said in prepared testimony before Congress.

Over the past several weeks we’ve seen a dip in the price of gold. After reaching and surpassing the $1000 mark in March, gold has eased a bit in light of some conservative Fed forecasting. But does that mean that the crisis is over and gold will be steadily falling? Hardly.

The U.S. Federal Reserve will make sure the global financial markets have sufficient liquidity to operate effectively and will increase the size of its government bond auctions if additional capital is needed, central bank Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said today (Tuesday).

A little less than 12 months ago, the world’s biggest financial players suddenly found they could not turn some $1.3 trillion of their assets into cash.

Scaring the false capitalists…Valuing the real capitalists.