Jim Simons Lasts A Whole Hour Without Chain Smoking A Carton Or Two

Much like our President who earlier announced he had quit smoking, with the exception of inhaling the occasional pack every time the mortgage spread passes 100 bps or gold gets close to $1,000. Deep thoughts from the SPARC-tamer himself. Oddly absent is a discussion of stochastic processes involving the massive loss of capital for LPs caught on the wrong end of a huge high-beta short squeeze.

Mass Layoff Events Continue Accelerating

It was only three months ago when people assumed that the turnaround in BLS' metric for mass layoff events meant an end to something or another. Nope. For the third straight month both mass layoff events and initial claimants for insurance picked up. There is nothing even remotely optimistic about this data... Which probably explains why unlike March when CNBC filled an entire day discussing this brand new datapoint that none of the anchors had heard before, today one would not hear a peep out of them on it. Next month: the 6 month MA gets surpassed on both indications.

Visteon Final Bond Recovery Price: 3 Cents On The Dollar

Market tests are useful as they best indicate just what is the real value of hundreds of billions of distressed securities stripped away from any unwarranted optimism and green shoot propaganda. Today's Visteon CDS Auction was just one such test.

Redbook Retail Index Plunges Again

In what is surely a shocking turn for the Mainstream Media, today's horrendous Johnson Redbook Index numbers were curiously not noted anywhere. As Zero Hedge believes in not depriving its audience of data points, especially those lacking a green steroid shot, the charts below indicate just much of a lack to the US budget deficit, upcoming consumer subsidies will be for President Obama (and taxpayers).

By way of background:

Bloomberg Fascinated With California CDS

In its Chart of the Day, Bloomberg finally picks up on a topic that Zero Hedge readers are all too familiar with - California CDS.

CNBC Breaking News Of The Day

No commentary necessary.

Intraday Charting

As Obama speaks and investors recall what it was like to short the market at every TV appearance of the president, the dollar is getting pillaged: the DXY just dropped below the 80 support level after Europe has said it will start tightening soon.