Unemployment has hit a five year high, according to a report released by the Labor Dept. Friday. Unemployment surged from 5.7 in July to 6.1 percent in August. Analysts had expected the rate to remain unchanged. The drastic increase gave investors pause as it was a signal of a heightened risk that the economy will continue to worsen.

The Doha Development Round, which began in November 2001, was thought to have stalled in Geneva, Switzerland last month, but senior conference officials are set to meet again next week, according to Reuters.

Revisiting the Doha Agenda is being encouraged by trade-minded officials in India, China, Brazil and unfortunately the United States.

The consistent indecision of the Federal Open Market Committee seems to be endless, as board members remain split as to whether they should raise key interest rates, according to MarketWatch.

Janet Yellen, president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, believes that the FOMC should maintain key rates at the current 2 base-point level. Her contention is that inflationary pressures will wane as oil and food prices fall from their mid-summer records. Richard Fisher, president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, believes otherwise and contended that the FOMC needs to rein in the money supply by increasing key rates, which would stave off inflation.

In a trend that is both scary and familiar, corporate loan defaults have risen to a five year high in the month of August. The defaults are concentrated among smaller companies in troubled industries. The mortgage meltdown was once thought to be confined to a small number homeowners with subprime loans. However, that myth was quickly dispelled when the crisis spread industry-wide.

Now many analysts fear that the same thing could happen with corporate loans. Defaults rose to 3.3 percent in August. At the end of 2007 that number was just .24 percent, accounting for about 400 loans.