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.

Bad data pushes investors into US treasuries…  Barclay’s says the euro will rally…  SNB surprises with a rate cut…  Iceland gets their bailout… And Now… Today’s Pfennig!

With gross domestic product plummeting and the jobless rate at a 14-year high, U.S. policymakers will have to author at least one more stimulus package in the months to come if they are to elbow aside the impact of high unemployment and depressed consumers.

It was January 1934. The Great Depression was five years old – but still had another five years to run.
The carnage was horrific: From 1929 to 1934, U.S. personal income plunged 44%, real output nosedived 30% and the unemployment rate soared to 25% of the American labor force.

All of this unemployment must be impacting demand for goods and services, which may be what prompted Jim Sinclair of jsmineset.com to ask a lot of questions, including ‘Do you really believe that present inflation is demand driven?’

In the currency market, the dollar came off its intraday lows but still sank against the euro. Late Wednesday, the euro was trading at $1.5548 vs. $1.5452 on Tuesday.

Crude oil for July delivery traded at an all-time high of $139.12 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange today (Friday), after the U.S. dollar nosedived on speculation that the European Central Bank would raise its key lending rate and on worries that a bigger-than-expected spike in unemployment meant the U.S. economy was far weaker than feared.

At least the traders in the futures market “know” what the Fed will do next. They’re betting on a rate hike - you can tell because the futures markets are starting to discount an interest rate hike by the Federal Reserve in October.

In the currency market, the dollar firmed against the euro. Late Tuesday, the euro was trading at $1.5696 vs. $1.5763 on Friday.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told the Financial Times today that, “I still believe there is a greater than 50 per cent probability of recession.” But, “that probability has receded a little and I think the probability of a severe recession has come down markedly”.