'Fast Money' Recap: Jobless Angst

Wall Street took a blow Friday from yet another bad jobless report.

The conventional wisdom leading up to the Labor Department's report was that the jobless number would be bad, and it was. The jobless rate rose 0.4% to 7.2% in December as the nation lost 524,000 jobs for the month and 2.6 million jobs for 2008, the most since the end of World War II.

That report helped send the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 143.28, or 1.64%, to 8,599.18, while the S&P 500 dropped 19.38, or 2.13%, to 890.35. The Nasdaq lost 45.42, or 2.81%, to 1,571.59.

Dylan Ratigan, the moderator of CNBC's "Fast Money" TV show, focused the attention of the panel on the other big business story of the day: the departure of former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin from Citigroup (C Quote) and word that its Smith Barney brokerage unit would on the block, with the likely suitor to be Morgan Stanley (MS Quote).

Ratigan said the news underscores the plight not only of Citigroup and its need for capital but also the rest of the industry as a whole. He said financial stocks have started the year already on the wrong foot, down 6% for the worst performance of any sector.

Tim Seymour said the Citigroup shakeup shows that its model does not work. "There's a lot of debt and uncertainty there," he said. On the other hand, he said it makes a lot of sense for Smith Barney to be picked up by Morgan Stanley because the latter has done "very well in the business."

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