Ground Floor: The words on everyone's lips last week were "jobless recovery" as the US unemployment data for August were released to general disappointment.The term has been bandied about quite a bit for the last few months as companies moved back into profitability and their share prices increased but haven't taken the step of hiring more employees to deal with higher demand.
The explanation for this has usually been that it takes time for confidence to be rebuilt and that companies don't hire until they're sure that they won't be firing again shortly afterwards.
Which is all very reasonable and understandable except that the recovery part of this cycle has been gaining momentum over the last 12 months but the unemployment rate has remained around 6 per cent.
The problem for the US is that, with a growing population, the economy needs to create around 150,000 jobs each month just to maintain the status quo.
The most recent figure was a kick in the teeth for most forecasters who predicted modest gains as it showed a decline of 93,000, which is the worst set of numbers in five months.
As I've said before, a recovery in which share prices and corporate profitability increase but which leaves more and more people unemployed, isn't worth the paper it's written on.
The news is particularly poor for teenagers and non-white Americans - 18.6 per cent of those looking for work in their teens are unemployed while 11.8 per cent of the unemployed workforce is black or African-American.
The lowest category for unemployment is for white, adult women at 5.2 per cent - all of which gives an interesting social snapshot of the US today.
People who wanted to take good news out of the unemployment statistics pointed out that corporate profits should rise even more on the back of what had to be considered as increased productivity on the basis that output is high on fewer workers.
But that's looking through rose-tinted glasses because if more and more people are out of work then demand for the products that those corporations manufacture will eventually fall.
Eventually is the key word, I guess, and the one on which anyone who questions the sustainability of this rally might falter, because consumer confidence and spending have been holding surprisingly steady.
As we have seen over the past two years, Americans seem content to spend their way out of trouble and although many will admit to feeling insecure about their futures, they haven't tightened their belts to the extent that we might have expected either.
In fact there has been an attitude of "buy it now because in a year I mightn't be able to afford it at all" rather than holding off on purchases in order to have some money in the future. An attitude probably helped by the fact that rates have been so low that returns on cash are seen as derisory.
And with the positive returns on equities that we've seen in the past year too, perhaps some people aren't feeling as badly off as they were a few months ago either. So maybe the world's biggest economy can continue this recovery phase without the knock-back that many of us fear.
But if consumers are out there buying goods they'll have to be American goods, otherwise those unemployment numbers will come home to roost in a way that neither Americans nor the rest of the world will want to see.
I don't want to be a gloom merchant but I can't help feeling edgy about the sustainability of this recovery.
George W is undoubtedly keeping his fingers crossed because he needs confident, free-spending Americans at the moment so that he can get more money out of them to finance the rebuilding of Iraq and to get himself re-elected. Dubya asked Congress to back a spending package for Iraq and Afghanistan costing $87 million (€77.8 million) which will probably be raised by government borrowing. The amount of money that the current administration needs to borrow continues to increase - which is having a knock-on effect on Treasury prices.
The budget deficit is expected to be close to $500 billion and that will be financed by issuing bonds. It has been a savage few months for bond traders - increased equity prices have seen investors sell bonds and have a go at shares again at the same time as governments needing to borrow money are issuing more paper.
The excess of supply over demand has caused bond prices to plummet and yields to increase and that effect has been seen throughout the global bond market. (This is why there is so much talk about increased prices for fixed mortgages.) Attention in some circles has turned away from equities (take the profit!) and bonds (too edgy!) and has focused on that old reliable - gold. During the boom years, gold was for wearing round your neck but had little value as an investment, falling steadily per ounce to around $250.
But lately it's been trading close to $400 again. The fortunes of gold are linked to the value of the dollar; as the greenback continues a decline which some analysts think will continue for a number of years, gold's allure becomes all the greater.
My preference is diamonds but given that I am notorious for losing every bit of jewellery I possess I've reluctantly come to accept that my precious metal and gemstone investments should be limited to an infinitesimal percentage of the overall portfolio.
Rather unfortunately, the man seems to agree with me and has yet to surprise me with a sparkler nestling in my branflakes.
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