Final Financial Update/ Week of September 14, 2009

Good Afternoon Everyone and Happy Friday! Today brings us the unemployment numbers for the individual states. California actually DOESN’T lead the nation in total layoffs this month. In July our state laid off 38K workers, in August that number dropped to 12K (maybe there’s fewer jobs available to lay off). The rate of unemployment rose to 12.2%, but thankfully, the number of layoffs decreased significantly. We are one of 42 states who’s unemployment rate rose again in August. Some pundits are predicting that the unemployment rate will crest by the end of the year or early next year. Yet, Reuters reported yesterday that Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman said that “unemployment in the U.S. will peak in early 2011 because of a slow and painful recovery from the global economic crisis.” This is that 800 pound gorilla we’ve talked about before that’s standing over there in the corner about which nobody wants to talk.

We did end up having a good day in credit markets yesterday, and are giving back some of our gains today. Even still, our pricing this morning is about .25 better in rebate than yesterday morning’s note offerings. The stock market continues to impress as bulls seem to step up and buy in at every dip. How long can they continue to do this? I don’t know, but one thing’s for sure, rates improve significantly with every time we have a serious drop in stock prices. The Dow has gained about 2% this week, and 7% in the last 10 trading days . . . with only 2 down days during this stretch. Impressive to say the least.

There are no other economic news releases and no corporate announcements on the docket today. Since options and futures contracts do expire today, we’ll likely see some volatility in the equity markets Monday. Hopefully we’ll get back some of our progress in credit markets from yesterday.

I will be in the office all day today catching up on yesterday’s biz and handling the new business of the day. Call me here or better yet email me if I can help you with a loan scenario or pricing question. Have a terrific Friday and a very restful and relaxing weekend!