Recommended Book:

Bond Daddy
By John P. Bott and Jason L. Fowell
Publisher: iUniverse

Inspired by actual events from a 1970's boiler room operation, Bond Daddy chronicles the success, excesses, and failures of men who end up secretly living abroad, wasting away in prison or mysteriously murdered . Events that could only have happened in the 70's and will never happen again!  

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Stocks falter after wild day, Europe woes linger

By STEPHEN BERNARD and SETH SUTEL, AP Business Writer
AP

  NEW YORK – Turbulence is continuing in the stock market Friday, a day after some of the most volatile trading in history.

Stock prices fluctuated sharply, as they often do the day after a big slide. The Dow Jones industrial average was down about 110 points in early afternoon trading, having been down as much as nearly 280 points earlier. Traders remained anxious amid questions about what caused Thursday's sudden drop, which sent the stocks of several companies briefly to almost zero.

The market looked past a surprisingly strong report on the U.S. jobs market and focused instead on Europe's spreading debt crisis and Thursday's plunge. The Dow was down nearly 1,000 points Thursday afternoon — its largest one-day drop — before recovering two-thirds of its losses.

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Largest hiring burst in years, but jobless rate up

Jobs grow by most in 4 years, but unemployment rises to 9.9 pct. as more people look for work

By Jeannine Aversa, AP Economics Writer
AP

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The economy got what it needed in April: A burst of hiring that added a net 290,000 jobs, the biggest monthly total in four years.

The improving picture caused so many more people to pour into the labor force in search of employment that the jobless rate rose from 9.7 percent to 9.9 percent.

The hiring last month of 66,000 temporary government workers to conduct the census added to overall job creation. But private employers -- the backbone of the economy -- contributed the most: A surprisingly strong 231,000 jobs, the most since March 2006, the Labor Department said Friday.

The new jobs, generated by sectors across the economy, are the first sign that the recovery is adding significant numbers of new jobs -- even if not enough to absorb the influx of jobseekers. That's why the unemployment rate rose.

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City may be quick to exit recession

By By NANCY SARNOFF
Houston Chronicle

Modest job growth throughout 2010 will help boost Houston's real estate market, Houston economist Barton Smith said Thursday in what was his last forecast speech as head of the University of Houston's Institute for Regional Forecasting.

Houston is working its way out of the recession more quickly than he and most other observers anticipated, said the longtime prognosticator and UH economics professor, who is retiring at the end of the summer.

"The old wisdom that because Houston was so late in getting into the recession that it would be late in getting out of it simply proved to be wrong," he said during a luncheon speech in the Imperial Ballroom of downtown's Hyatt Regency Houston.

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