There has been a lot of action in the currency market this morning, mostly centered on the British pound and Euro. However this morning's US data should not be ignored especially since we have non-farm payrolls due for release on Friday. Jobless claims broke the psychologically hobbling 600k mark to rise by the largest amount in 26 years. The total number of people collecting unemployment benefits also jumped to a record high of 4.788 million. It won't be long before we see 5 million people on unemployment rolls and that could be very damaging to consumer confidence. We continue to believe that non-farm payrolls will be weak but possibly not as bad as the December figures. We expect risk aversion to resume going into the payrolls report as investors realize that the economy remains in bad shape and will stay that way for the next few months.