Gold rose on Thursday as the dollar fell versus a basket of currencies, with rebounding stock markets and U.S. jobless figures showing a decline in continuing claims boosting appetite for assets seen as higher risk.

Earnings reports begin this week…  Dollar, yen, francs get bought…  Medvedev shows off new coin!  A busy week! And Now… Today’s Pfennig!

Global stocks slid anew on Tuesday as an uptick in German manufacturing orders failed to offset persistent concerns about economic prospects, worries that pushed crude oil down prices to below $63 a barrel.

There is quite a bit of discussion right now about if this market rally is real, and if it is how long it can last. The last round of corporate earnings weren’t as bad as many expected, and there seems to be some tempered optimism that this could be a sustained rally.

Corporate earnings will take center stage again this week as certain financials hope to follow last week’s upbeat announcement by banking giant Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) with some decent earnings reports of their own.

This is the time of year in which many  investors really start to study corporate earnings, jobless statistics and all sorts of other state data in an effort to divine what’s next for China. But I simply prefer to head for the Wan Chai Street Market in Hong Kong, or the Temple Street Night Market across the harbor in Kowloon, and check on hairy crab prices as we approach the Lunar New Year.

“The Next Big Storm to Hit the Markets” is the headline for an essay by John Robson & Andrew Selsby of Full Circle Asset Management, who write, “Above all others, the outlook for corporate earnings is the big issue”, and they expect that earnings will “also catch ‘fall off a cliff syndrome’.”

The news just keeps getting worse, and I note with dismay that the latest report of initial claims for unemployment are 516,000 – well past the psychologically-important half-million mark – personal bankruptcies averaged “4,936 per business day in October” – which is up 8% from September and 34% more than October 2007.

You know it’s a real financial crisis when capitalists are being told what to do by a bunch of socialists and communists. But these are the times we live in. Ironic and moronic.

Last week US stocks rallied sharply capping their best week since February, after Corporate America posted results that beat analysts’ estimates.

“But don’t mistake a bear rally for a new bull market,” says Eric Roseman.

“No matter what happens in the short-term, most stocks will be poor investments over the next several years as inflation, deflation and a long-term contraction in bank credit slow the world’s largest economy to pre-1995 levels.