Continuing yesterday's trend when the Europeans and the Chinese cut their bank rates, and the Brits commenced another £50B of quantitative easing, today's numbers continued bearish. Most significant were the U.S. employment numbers.

The U.S. total unemployment number remained unchanged at 8.2% as expected. There was a .1% increase in the U 6 number that measures the underemployed (part timers and those employed in situations, but are beneath their calling.) Of greater importance to the markets is the Non-Farm Employment Change report. The guesstimates had been for a small number, only 100K new jobs, but the 80K was even weaker than had been estimated. There was an 84K increase in the private sector, professional services (47K) healthcare (13K) and manufacturing (11K), which meant there had to be a small reduction in public sector jobs.

The job growth, though poor and the worst quarter since the recovery began, is still positive.