The number sounded so good at first blush: 431,000 new hires by American employers in May 2010, the 5th consecutive month of positive job growth in the USA.  But a closer look at the government data revealed that 411,000 of the 431,000 jobs were Census workers (i.e., 95% of the total).  Those Census jobs are largely the individuals going door-to-door (there are 635,000 of these folks nationwide) and represents work that will end sometime next month.  As these details reached Wall Street, stocks tumbled as investors sold equities and bought bonds (source: BTN Research). 
 
It had the same look and feel as 10/23/08 when Alan Greenspan admitted before a House committee that he had been wrong in not pushing for greater regulation of derivatives.  Last Wednesday (6/02/10), it was 79-year old stock wizard Warren Buffett admitting before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission that "I was wrong" in thinking that nearly all the mortgage-backed securities (MBS) made up of dozens of mortgages from across the country warranted a AAA rating.  Like millions of American real estate investors, Buffett believed that the chances of a nationwide real estate collapse were much smaller than they proved to be (source: Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission). 
 
The use of "circuit breakers" by the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) was originally implemented in the late '80s as a result of the 1987 market crash.  But this week for the first time ever, investors will see "circuit breakers" on individual stocks.  This is in response to the incredible volatility that the NYSE experienced on 5/06/10.  The new rules will apply to all the stocks in the S&P 500 (source: BTN Research).