CNBC Guest Blog

Published: Friday, 6 Nov 2009 | 12:31 PM ET

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Andrew Busch
Global Finance Strategist
BMO Financial Group

The headline number of 10.2% will be shouted from the mountain tops and from the voters. The Federal Reserve and the US Treasury are in the glare of the klieg lights to get something done to arrest the job losses.

Assuming the role of instigator Woody Woodpecker, Sen. John McCain is tweeting messages like, "Unemployment 10.2%,? Wash Post: "Corporate Giants sit on piles of cash." Obviously, you can see where this political conversation is going to go.

President Obama signed legislation extending benefits for unemployed workers and for extending an $8,000 tax credit for first time home buyers.

The bill also provides tax refunds to money losing companies.

He stated that this was fiscally responsible as it wouldn't add to the deficit.

The good news is that major slashing and burning of jobs in the US is over and the pace of the declines has decreased. Yes, this is the equivalent of falling at a slower rate of decline.

For the markets, this means the current structures in place of credit, fiscal, and monetary easing will remain well into next year. Coupled with the Fed easing, the high productivity numbers are a positive for earnings and equities. Last night on Kudlow, we talked about how when the Fed is in an easing mode, this is a major positive for stocks. This hasn't changed and won't for some time to come.

These weak job numbers won't preclude central bank and finance ministers discussions about how an exit strategy will be enacted nor when it will begin. This weekend's G20 meetings will follow up on the previous meetings verbal jousting on how this will be accomplished. Will there truly be agreed upon metrics for "Peer Review" of country's finances? Or how about individual country's currency policies?

These contentious issues will show that after banding together to help stabilize the global economy, the G20 will have very little common ground to generate agreement on more difficult issues.

Wrapping this up, things are slowly getting less worse and not much else has changed.

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Andrew B. Busch is Global FX Strategist at BMO Capital Markets, a recognized expert on the world financial markets and how these markets are impacted by political events, and a frequent CNBC contributor. You can comment on his piece and reach him here and you can follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/abusch .

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