So, let’s start with employment today, shall we?

We have Manpower’s latest survey of hiring intentions for US companies, which are best described as “sluggish,” with the seasonally adjusted employment outlook for the US being the weakest since Manpower began its survey, in 1962.

On the other side it appears that retail hiring is showing some signs of picking up, but holiday retail employment was pretty beaten down in 2008 anyway. (See top picture)

Also, it appears that US companies are still cutting temporary employees from their payrolls, (bottom pic) and temps tend to be both the first in the door, and the first out the door.^*

On Europe, we are getting conflicting signals, with consumer confidence in the U.K. hitting its highest level since May, 2008, but German industrial output falling in July, production rose 0.8% in June, but fell 0.9% in July, against a consensus estimate of a gain of 1.6%….Ouch.

The intersection of banking and consumers in the US ain’t doing well, with U.S. consumer credit falling at a 10% annual rate, or $21.6 billion, and Standard & Poor’s noting that despite a slight improvement in July, it expects credit card write-offs to continue to increase.

Meanwhile if you follow the stock market, perhaps you should listen to Warren Buffett:

Mr. Buffett declined to predict the short-run course of the stock market. But corporate data from Berkshire shows his company was selling more stocks than it was buying by the end of the second quarter, according to Bloomberg News. Its spending on stocks fell to the lowest level in more than five years, although the company is still deftly picking up shares in some companies and buying corporate and government debt.

(emphasis mine)

So he is moving out of stock, and getting completely out of Moody’s. (more on that in another post.)

Meanwhile, we have some gold bug news, with gold topping $1000.00/oz (troy).

In related news, the value of the dollar and gold tend to be inversely related, the dollar fell to its lowest level vs. the Euro this year, $1.4491:€1.0000.

We also saw this pushing up the price of oil today, up 4.5% to $71.10/bbl.

^*Something I am all too familiar with, having done contract technical work for the past 17 years.