Well, the Euros are not doing well with unemployment, hitting 9.2%, which is not as bad as it sounds, because the EU’s count is more accurate, and so generally excludes fewer people from the unemployment statistics, and because the social safety net is better there.

We have some good news in real estate, with pending existing home sales jumping, though the numbers are still awful, and large proportion of them are distressed sales.

Still, the most recent numbers on construction spending are grim, and you can see that it looks like non residential construction is due to start falling too.

Still the home sales number kept profit taking against oil to a minimum.

The dollar is getting interesting, as in the curse, “May you live in interesting times,” over the past few weeks. It hit another low for 2009:, and there is active talk about countries moving to some other currency, typically the Euro, Russia’s idea of some sort of “non western” reserve currency being a pipe dream.