Weekly initial unemployment claims are at 516,000, up from 484,000, well above the estimate of 479,000, and the highest number since 2 weeks after the 911 attacks.

With the caveat that weekly unemployment figures have a lot of noise, I would like to segue to a much noisier indicator, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, when fell below 8,000, though it rallied and ended up for the day.

Yean, I know, stock gyrations are really completely noise, but crossing 8K is a big deal for the markets, even if the Dow ended the day up 500+ points.

A better indicator of what is going on in the world is the fact that Germany is now officially in a recession, having experience two consecutive quarters of negative growth.

Calculated Risk’s regular post of credit crisis indicators, a very useful collection of interest rates and interest rate spreads really did not do much today.

That being days, CR does have a nice chart of spreads between 30 Year corporate bonds and treasuries, and it is not pretty:

Of course if you want to be scared, the fact that foreclosures are up 25% year over year, and that Ranieri’s Franklin Bank has filed chapter 7 (liquidation).

They are the 3rd largest lender to fail this year.

Speaking of failures, there is already General Motors, and Goldman Sachs has suspended its rating of the auto maker, which is a polite way of saying, “Absent a bailout, it’s done.”

In the meantime, oil rose at the end of the day, along with the rising Dow, which indicates that oil traders are complete morons who trade on chicken entrails and other spooky omens.

The dollar was mixed today.