The 598,000 drop in payrolls was within the realm of dealer expectations but add on a big downward revision to January, revised to 602,000, and benchmark revisions for much of 2008 which brought the 2008 job loss close to 3 mln are ugly. The jobless rate jumped to 7.6%.
EUR/USD has surprised me by rallying out of the data. It squeezed up to 1.2842 before dipping to 1.2815 at present.
EUR/JPY is firmer, perhaps on a sigh of relief that the data wasn’t even worse.Equities are rallying out of the gate, in anticipation of 900 bln goodies from Uncle Sam. The bond market is rising in yield as they try and figure out how toi pay for it all.
