The good news is that there was a 6% drop in foreclosures from April to May. That is the good news, but the bad news is that May was the third straight month in a row for foreclosures topping 300,000.

RealtyTrac, which is the firm responsible for these figures stated that the exact number of foreclosure filings during the month was 321,480.

There is still much debate taking place as to whether or America is close to coming out of its current recession, but you would not know it by watching oil prices over the past few months. Today was no exception, with prices moving above $66 barrel as we head into the weekend.

It seems like a long time ago that oil prices were hovering down in the low $30's, but it was not all that long ago... just five months to be exact. As oil has been rising, so have gasoline prices. It is easy to view the current gas prices as "cheap", considering where we were this time last year, but you have probably already noticed a nice jump in what you are paying these days.

The employment data is in for April, and it is not a pretty picture, as all but 6 states in the country saw increases in the number of jobless claims.

We all hope that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is right, and the economy is going to start to turn around in the latter part of this year, but even the most optimistic forecasters agree that unemployment is going to continue to rise, possibly above 10% before the worst is over.

There are two competing forces at work in the oil market. On the one hand, OPEC has already cut production by 4.2 million barrels per day since last September. OPEC's secretary has said the producer group was willing to make further cuts when it meets in March. The price of crude has been holding steady near (above or below) the $40.00 per barrel mark.

Another factor weighing on the market is the threat of some 30,000 U.S. refinery workers who may go on strike. This can bring our refinery capacity to a virtual standstill. In Britain, workers staged an unofficial walkout on Friday in protest over the use of foreign workers.

Oil prices got a boost today from the news of a large interest rate cut in China, which analysts believe should have the result of lifting oil demand for the country.

China is doing all it can to keep its booming economic growth alive. The country announced its largest interest rate cut in 11 years, as the People's Bank of China slashed rates by 1.08 percentage points.

Oil prices, which have been in a virtual free fall since their record high levels over the summer, moved up as high as $52.76 earlier in the session, and are now trading up $1.40 a barrel to $51.75.

The move by China should help the country rebound from the current slowdown it is seeing in economic growth. The massive expansion of the economies in China and India are a major reason why oil prices moved so much higher in the past couple years, and if today's announced cuts have the intended effect of increasing economic activity, then the country should indeed see an increase in its thirst for oil.

As Washington tries to come up with an agreement on how to solve the current economic crisis, we received more information today on just how bad things are getting, as figures show new home sales were very weak during the month of August.

As the credit crunch and falling home values continue to apply pressure to an already weak housing market, the Commerce Department announced today that new home sales in August fell by a sharp 11.5% in August, resulting in a seasonally adjusted sales rate of 460,000 new homes. To find the last time we saw a rate this low, we would have to look all the way back to January of 1991.

As always, Wall Street likes to compare actual numbers to estimates. Had economists been expecting to see a 10% or greater drop in new home sales, that would be one thing, but that was not the case. Going into today's report, economists were expecting to see new home sales fall, though not nearly the 11.5% actual rate, but a much smaller drop of only 1% in the month. So today's reported sales figures are definitely going to add to the confusion that many are feeling regarding the housing market.

As concerns over America's economy began to spread in 2007, many investors decided to look overseas for protection. In order to hedge themselves against a possible economic slowdown in the U.S., traders poured money into emerging markets such as India and China, but some are starting to question just how safe these markets will be this year.

Last year, when it looked like the U.S. economy was going to get hit with a weak dollar and nasty housing market, it made sense to look to different markets for protection, but now some are fearing that the problems that are plaguing America will reach a point where they will pull down foreign economies also.

What we have seen in 2008 is a pretty substantial downtrend in some of last year's favorite safe havens. Markets such as Korea, Thailand, Turkey and Brazil have all been hit in the first half of January and are down over 8 percent.

In late April, Portfolio Recovery (NASDAQ: PRAA) reported better-than-expected earnings, launched a massive share buyback plan, and announced a one-time special dividend payment of $1 per share. The stock jumped on this positive news and has hardly looked back since.

Portfolio Recovery is one company that actually benefits from a deterioration in consumer credit quality. The firm buys up pools of defaulted credit card debt, automobile loans, and even unpaid telephone bills. Because these loans are delinquent or in default, they can be scooped up for just a few pennies on the dollar.

The original lenders that sell this debt can at least recoup some of their losses before writing the loans off the books. And if Portfolio Recovery collects on even a small percentage of the debt it buys, then the company earns a tidy profit. The trick, of course, is not to overpay.

When consumer credit quality is very strong, there are only a limited number of available pools of appropriate debt for Portfolio Recovery to buy. Because of the limited supply of delinquent debt, competition to buy these loans can be heated -- this tends to push up prices and cut into margins. However, with interest rates rising and the economy slowing, default rates on consumer debt have begun to tick higher. This tends to open up more opportunities for Portfolio Recovery to purchase bad debt on the cheap.

I believe the shares deserve to trade at a 20% premium to their growth rate, which would equate to a multiple of 22X this year's earnings estimates. This would give the stock a target near $70 per share.

For more from Paul Tracy, please visit www.streetauthority.com

Lunch at O'Brien's Irish Restaurant & Pub: six bucks (drinks not included) -- oh my! In Santa Monica, with Wilshire Boulevard rents yet -- unbelievable!

Sarah Gilbert and I have been finding little bits of information here and there (Economic indicators coming from more unlikely places) that support the notion the slowing economy is being felt by the "little guy" first, as usual. Small business owners see it first because they have very flat enterprises. (Venice Beach as a leading economic indicator) Owner and staff and that's it. Sometimes just themselves. Employees receiving a paycheck see it early and have the least options to adjust to change, and fixed income seniors -- they're totally stressed out.

Large companies have so many levels of management that by the time the guy at the top feels the pain (assuming he ever does) of the guy at the bottom he has already collected his bonus for his underperforming company. By the time the guy at the top responds to the needs of the guy on the bottom (assuming he ever does) the guy on the bottom has already figured out what he needs to do to survive and has helped himself.

Composing this post in my head walking back from lunch I wondered about how much attention we pay to Wall Street data each day, even though that data really comes to us second-hand from everywhere else.

Some of you laughed when Sheldon Liber pointed to sales of art and crafts in Venice Beach, Calif., as a leading economic indicator -- and some of you (like me) thought it prescient. I couldn't help agreeing, as I'm dialed into the crafts scene here in Portland, Ore., and have watched a startling decline in artsy-fartsy sales since last fall.

Reading today's MarketBeat from The Wall Street Journal [subscription required], then, I found the latest kooky indicator: Bobby. More to the point, the sales of Bobby's grilled chickens. He owns and operates a lunch grill somewhere in the Great Lakes, and his business has fallen sharply, despite lowering his price-per-lunch plate from $7 to $6.25. Notably missing amongst his regulars: the blue-collar workers.

Blogger Jeff Matthews discovered Bobby, and he believes Bobby's chicken sales are an indicator. He writes, "Being in the Midwest, and being a half-dozen hours north of Detroit, what we have here is the real-life impact of those GM and Ford oops-we-make-gas-guzzlers-and gas-is-$3.00-a-gallon headlines, multiplied across dozens of factories and thousands of lives dependent on those companies and their gas guzzlers for work." Matthews believes we'll see the impact in GM, Ford, Toll Brothers, Centex Homes, Lowes, Home Depot.

I'm fascinated to see if these theories end up being correct. Could a slowdown be in the works for the fall?