Weekend Reading: When It Rains...

Welcome to another edition of Weekend Reading. First, a look back at the week that just finished, then a look forward to the week ahead, and finally, a summary of articles and papers worth reading.

It was another crummy week on the markets, and it capped an uneven month. The major U.S. markets had one up week during August and then lost ground. They capped the month with declines last week of 0.7% on both the Dow and S&P 500 and 1.9% on the Nasdaq Composite.

Looking forward to next week, it should be a wild ride even though it will be shortened by the Labor Day holiday. We have Hurricane Gustav causing Gulf of Mexico oil production to be shut down, traders coming back from summer holidays, yet another bank closure and yammering about Fannie Mae(FNM) and Freddie Mac(FRE), all on top of the usual mix of uncertain economic news. Maybe the market will find all of this to be just the wall of worry that it wants to climb to produce gains, but somehow I doubt it.

Turning to economic indicators, it will be a busy week. On Friday, the government plans to release the August employment report, and it's expected to be weak, with a likely decline of 85,000 jobs or more. We will also see data on U.S. auto and retail sales, plus the Federal Reserve's Beige Book survey of economic conditions.

As for earnings, next week will be very light on reports. We will, however, see results from H&R Block(HRB) and Staples(SPLS) among others.

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• Truck stop operators say diesel fuel sales volumes decline. (Oil & Gas Journal)
• Barron's pans private equity picks, and picks 'cheapish' European stocks. (Barrons)
• Great Sam Zell interview. (Bloomberg)
• Lehman Brothers in urgent talks on capital injection. (Telegraph)
• The death of the credit card economy (Slate)
• British economy facing 'worst downturn in 60 years': Darling - (Yahoo! News)
• Bank of China flees Fannie-Freddie (FT.com)
• Is there a wave of option repricing coming? (iGreed)
• Most U.S. Gulf oil output shut as Gustav threatens (Reuters)
• Bank profits are set to pay a price for Fed risk limits (Bloomberg.com)
• Microsoft stock performance newly besting Google's (iGreed)
• China: Warning signs from the center of the boom (Globe & Mail)
• Recommended reading in these confused times from Fed sorts, CEOs, economists and others. (The Washington Post)
• Inside the Halycon hedge fund partnership problems. (New York Post)

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