By Carlos Guillen

Investors are continuing to worry about the rather sharp turn of events that is now threatening to change the austerity plans in France and Greece after the rather surprising election results in the region this past weekend. It is apparent that the French and Greeks are not taking the austerity measures very well and have spoken to make changes that will go against the plans to cut government spending. All this is serving to sink equities today over 1.3 percent on the Dow Jones Industrial Average, representing the fifth day of losses.

Despite all the promises that the new French President has made, we can find some relief in the notion that he will be limited in terms of what he can change as France simply does not have a lot of room to maneuver its economy. If France were to try to finance its expenses through higher debt, it would simply find itself paying much higher interest rates that it could not service for long, so the nation simply does not have a whole lot of wiggle room. More than likely the new French leader will have to back off from many of the promises that he made to win the election.

Perhaps a bit encouraging today was the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary, or JOLTS report, which gave some hope of improving prospects in the jobs market. The highlight of the report was that the number of available jobs in the U.S. jumped in March to near a three-year high, providing some evidence that the jobs situation is heading in the right direction. The number of job openings in March was 3.74 million, up from 3.57 million in February and the highest since August 2008 when it was 3.65 million. At the moment the number of job openings still remains well below the 4.26 million openings before the recession began in December 2007; however, the number of job openings has increased 56.3 percent since the end of the recession in June 2009. Among the largest gainers were Professional and Business Services and Health and Assistance. Hiring decreased by 88,000 to 4.36 million and firings decreased to 1.68 million from the 1.73 million posted in February. This data comes after Friday's rather disappointing jobs number that brought a less than expected increase in nonfarm jobs of 115,000 in April and an unemployment rate of 8.1 percent, down from 8.2 percent.

Now that the focus is back on the euro region, we can expect to see a lot more volatility in equity markets. Later this week we'll have some important forward looking indicators, including initial claims and consumer sentiment that will shed some light on the direction the short term economy is heading.

Small Business Bravado
By David Urani

There was a surprisingly strong report out this morning in the NFIB's small business optimism index. At 94.5, this matched the highest level since December 2007. The good reading comes from an overall great view on sales and earnings. Small businesses are reporting that actual changes in sales are the best since April 2007, and that led to the best earnings trends also since April 2007.

The thing is, we matched this same level for the headline index in February 2011, so essentially we've been stuck for a year, having just now recovered from the plunge last summer on European issues. In the meantime, small business consumer and owner confidence in the government is at historic lows due to uncertainty about national debt, taxes, health care, pro- union policies, regulations, and the election. Fears about regulation are near the highest since 1995.

The figures on small business performance are encouraging in that they are back to pre-recession levels but it's unfortunate that things could be even better if it weren't for some restraining decisions by the Feds.