Source: www.opednews.com Equities markets have been battered all week by bad economic data sending investors piling into "risk free" Treasuries. The Dow Jones slipped 276 points on Wednesday followed by a 41-point loss on Thursday. The benchmark 10-year Treasury has ducked below 3 percent, repeatedly signaling a slowdown that could lead to another recession. On Wednesday, the S&P/CaseShiller home-price index confirmed that the five-year long housing crash was still gaining pace. Home prices have fallen to their lowest level in eight years with no end in sight. Meanwhile the Chicago Manufacturing Gauge recorded its biggest decline in 2.5 years while factory orders dropped in April by the most since May, 2010. There was also bad news on the unemployment front where privately-owned businesses hired only 38,000 workers from April to May, nearly 100,000 less jobs than analysts had predicted. Also, consumer confidence fell to its lowest reading in six months. So, housing, manufacturing, unemployment and consumer confidence are all down, down, down and down. Friday's unemployment report was also worse than expected. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that unemployment rose to 9.1 percent while the Labor Force Participation Rate remained stuck at 64.2%, well below the normal rate of 67%. According to Calculated Risk, "The current employment recession is by far the worst recession since WWII in percentage terms...(The BLS report) was well below expectations for payroll jobs, and the unemployment rate was higher than expected." So, no new jobs are being created and the economy is quickly decelerating. It's all bad. On Friday, the chairman of RIT Capital Partners Jacob Rothschild issued a warning about the fragility of world markets and the bleak prospects for future growth. He said, "The risks ahead are glaring and global. It is likely that the withdrawal of the fiscal and monetary stimuli which will surely come soon will have an impact on global growth. Indeed there is already evidence of some slowing down." Commodities have already been walloped, but the real carnage is yet to come. This is from Bloomberg: