Economics Update

It's jobless Thursday, and initial jobless claims fell by 14K to 442,000, though it should be noted that a change to seasonal adjustments accounted for 11K of that 14 K.

The less noisy 4 week moving average fell by 11K to 453,750, and continuing claims fell by 54K to 4.65 million, the lowest number in 1¼ years.

All in all, good news, but we are still not at a number where we would see real job growth.

In the intersection of real estate and finance, we have 13.6% of US mortgages being delinquent in the 4^th quarter of 2009, up by 0.9% from the 3^rd quarter.

In a blast from the past, we have a development in the slow motion immolation of the monoliner insurers with the largest of the bond insurers, Ambac, had the Wisconsin Office of the Commissioner of Insurance take control of roughly $35 billion of insurance contracts on residential mortgages.

They have direct the troubled insurance company to segregate these contracts into separate accounts.

You arrogant ass. You've killed us!

Just so you know, it appears that the financial weapon of mass destruction, the Credit Default Swap is rearing its ugly head once again, as the segregation of accounts may constitute a "default" under the terms of the credit default swap contracts on these assets.

Seriously, this sh%$ is going to destroy us if we don't get a handle on it. (Cue captain Tupolev)

Finally, in currency the Euro has rebounded slightly off its low on reports of an imminent solution for the Greek crisis, though these concerns were still enough to push oil prices down.