RJ and Makay

The new Adversity Index Data for February from Moody's and msnbc.com is out. They find only 16 of 384 metro areas showed job gains in the past year. 53% of the nation's 384 metro areas have begun to recover which is a respectable one month increase over the 48% in January. 46% of the metro areas are in a "moderating recession" which means their economies are still shrinking but getting better.

Loredo, Texas (located on the north bank of the Rio Grande) is the one metro area in the country that the report considers to be still in a full-bore recession. Jacksonville, NC was the single metro area in expansion according to the index.

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I posted a response yesterday to an article entitled Clearing the air about wirehouse news coverage written in Investment News by Evan Cooper. Although I've enjoyed many of the other opinion pieces I've read by Evan Cooper I think he goes too far in his criticism of wirehouses while other channels get virtually a free pass in his recent opinion columns mentioned in my response.

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With today's job report we have another "mixed message" report but one I'm still encouraged by. Employers added 162,000 jobs in March, which was below economists expectations of about 200,000. The big buzz kill? One-third of these jobs came from temporary hiring from the Census. Of course these jobs are temporary and has just a short term effect on the numbers.