Wall Street is gloomy

The Dow was off 144 points in a lackluster session that was focused on the unexpected bump in jobless claims. Ordinarily, it shouldn't have been that big a deal (the weekly jobs report fluctuates too much to be all that meaningful), but piled on top of all the other bleak economic news, it fits into the conventional narrative being played over and over: That is, the economy is slumping and job growth is minimal. Also don't forget that we're fully into the dog days, volume is quite low (vacation season and all), corporate earnings season has run its course, and there's not that much other stuff to focus on. So the Thursday jobs report catapults to the top of the news budget, whether legitimate or not.