Not OK

Glenn Beck has been trashing this guy - Van Jones - for weeks. I'm not a Beck fan and I wish we could raise the public/media debate to a higher level.

The Washington Post today has some words on the topic:

"White House officials offered tepid support Friday for Van Jones, the administration's embattled energy efficiency guru, who has issued two public apologies this week, one for signing a petition that questioned whether Bush administration officials "may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war."


Earlier, Jones said he was "clearly inappropriate" in using a crude term to describe Republicans in a speech he gave before joining the administration."

Ridiculous.

edit: He just resigned.

9.7%

The jobs number just came out and it is worse than expected. The unemployment rate is now 9.7%.

Futures were up nicely and are struggling to stay positive.

Since it's the Friday before the last long weekend of the summer, I'm guessing that everyone is going to head to the beach early.

Jobs Thought of the Day

"Due to the 20% adjusted (his estimate of the real unemployent rate) unemployment rate(vs the 9.5% stated) as well as the off the charts debt [to]disposable personal income levels, this economy cannot enjoy a self-sustaining recovery without significant jobs growth."

Robert Marcin writing at RealMoney.com

The jobless claims number this morning was a disappointment and the unemployment data tomorrow, expected at 9.5%, are what everybody is waiting for.

My view is that things getting better slowly on the job front is the best we can hope for.

Gold

It's hard to find a good place to get charts of currency prices. That --> is the September gold futures price, spiking as you can see.

Someone is worried about something - probably inflation. Could also be out-of-control government spending.

On that note, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty was just on CNBC sounding very much like the next republican candidate for President.

That Was Ugly

Today's market I mean.

Since I have been thinking a correction is overdue, I'm not going to complain.

I have meetings in New York tomorrow so I'm going to try to ignore this market for the next 30 hours or so.

****

Not Much

6-month chart of the S&P 500. That's a big move - 676 to 1,020 - 50%.

The futures are indicating that this correction will continue today.

Icahn is throwing in the towel on Yahoo. That whole effort couldn't have been fun or funny.


Ebay has a buyer for Skype? No IPO? Like I've said before, this is a different Ebay. Buy it.

Though I haven't seen the note, I see that Bernstein downgraded AIG today. Not sure why it wasn't already a "sell".

I have a busy day ahead. More later.