MacroScope

It’s Thursday and that means another installment of U.S. jobless claims. For those keeping score at home, workers filing new claims for jobless benefits rose by a larger-than-expected 15,000 last week, taking the grand total to 478,000. Add in the daily dose of poor earnings results and the mood on Wall Street is looking grim. Again.

While the White House still won’t use the “R” word, company after company is warning of recession. Dow Chemical says “all bets are off” now that the global economy is sinking. Even Goldman Sachs is hurting.

So who isn’t suffering? Cigarette maker Altria. It seems they still managed to turn in a healthy quarterly profit.

Now that you’re feeling thoroughly depressed, allow us to offer a little levity, courtesy of our fake-news friends at The Onion. Read all the way to the end of their “dollar bill” cover story for a gem of a (fabricated) quote from former Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld Jr.A woman smokes a cigarette in a bar in downtown Zurich September 28, 2008.