Taking a poll - Is Bush an Idiot ?

NEW YORK - Wall Street bounded higher Friday, hurtling the Dow Jones industrial average to a record close approaching 13,000 as investors celebrated a week of surprisingly strong earnings reports. The major indexes all had their third straight winning week, their longest such streak since October.
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Investors who had tempered their expectations for first-quarter earnings on Monday were energized by the initial wave of upbeat results. So far into the earnings season, 16 of the 30 Dow components have posted financial results for the first three months of the year ? with 10 surpassing analyst forecasts. Dow components Honeywell International Inc., Caterpillar Inc., Pfizer Inc., and McDonald's Corp. all reported earnings Friday.

Unemployment (Household Survey Data)

In March, the number of unemployed persons (6.7 million) and the unemployment
rate (4.4 percent) were essentially unchanged. The jobless rate has remained
within a narrow range--4.4 to 4.6 percent--since September 2006. Over the month,
the unemployment rate for most major worker groups--adult men (4.0 percent), adult
women (3.8 percent), teenagers (14.5 percent), blacks (8.3 percent), and Hispanics
(5.1 percent)--showed little or no change. The jobless rate for whites decreased
to 3.8 percent. The unemployment rate for Asians was 3.0 percent, not seasonally
adjusted. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)

In March, the number of unemployed job losers and persons who had completed
temporary jobs declined by 215,000. The number of unemployed persons who had
been jobless for less than 5 weeks also fell, by 273,000. (See tables A-8 and
A-9.)

Total Employment and the Labor Force (Household Survey Data)

Both total employment, at 146.3 million, and the employment-population ratio,
at 63.3 percent, were essentially unchanged in March. Over the month, the labor
force participation rate held steady at 66.2 percent, about the same as a year
earlier. (See table A-1.)