The Week Unpeeled
The jobs picture turned a little sour last week with growth well below expectations because of a non-farm number at only 88,000 and an unemployment rate down to 7.6 percent in March, mostly because of folks leaving the workforce. That put a damper on the market, which has been on a tear. The Dow ended pretty much unchanged for the week at 14,565, and other indicators were mixed, reflecting the divergent opinions on the direction of the economy and outlook for this rally. In other markets, bonds continued to show signs of weakness with the closely watched “Agg” or Barclay’s US Aggregate Bond Index declining 0.12 percent in the first quarter, its first decline for that period (WSJ, Apr 3) in about seven years.
Elsewhere:
- The SEC “blessed” the use of social media for corporate America to announce market-moving news (Warren Buffett’s BusinessWire opted not to “like” by objecting to the decision, no surprise really because it can make those dissemination services obsolete);
- North Korea continued its bully tactics asking embassies to prepare evacuation plans;
- Apple CEO Tim Cook used the apologia app and said sorry to China for certain customer service policies;
- Facebook released what seems to be a super phone app called Home for Google’s Android operating system;
- Developing signs of bird flu in China started to make headlines;
- Roger Ebert, famed movie critic of thumbs up or down, died; and
- Jay-Z, ever-morphing, this time into sports agent.
