This week we turn the calendar page, and that change brings with it a raft of economic data. Scheduled for release on Monday are pending home sales and personal income numbers for January, as well as the Chicago PMI and car and truck sales data for February.

On Tuesday, look for the ISM Manufacturing Index for February and construction spending numbers for January. That's followed on Wednesday by the week's first employment data: the Challenger Job-Cuts announcement and the ADP employment report for February. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will deliver his semiannual monetary policy testimony before Congress on both days.

According to ADP, U.S. companies hired 55,000 additional workers in May, which marked the fourth straight increase in private-sector jobs. According to the data, service-producing industries added 78,000 jobs and goods-producing industries lost 23,000 jobs.

The ADP report is bolstering bulls on the Street a day ahead of the release of nonfarm payroll data and the unemployment rate. My concern is that expectations called for an increase of 100,000 jobs added in May. By my University of Cincinnati math, the data came in worse than expected by some 45,000 jobs.

This was set up for a good day, but ADP employment data projected about 23,000 jobs were lost rather than some 40,000 created. This lowered the unofficial expectations for Friday's unemployment data and non-farm payrolls data. Then came the weaker than expected ISM data from Chicago, which effectively sealed the fate for a weak trading day.

Bill Gross of PIMCO also noted that stock and bonds might have sub-par returns for years. With the negative macro-news flow today, a drop of 50 DJIA points after the run up we have seen lately might be considered a win.

Here were today's unofficial closing bell levels:

Dow 10,856.63 -50.79 (-0.47%)
S&P 500 1,169.43 -3.84 (-0.33%)
Nasdaq 2,397.96 -12.73 (-0.53%)

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Just when it seemed it was going so well, the ADP employment report demonstrated this morning that we have perhaps allowed our hopes to get too high. Expectations called for a gain of 40,000 jobs when the March ADP data was released, that was not the case. Rather than the gain, we were treated to the rather sour surprise of a drop of 23,000 jobs. In reaction to this news, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped more than 40 points lower in the first hour of trading.

That said, this may just be a temporary glitch in the jobs picture (I stress the term temporary). The ADP does not take government jobs into account, nor does it effectively "capture changes in the weather." Experts note that a surge in employees thanks to the 2010 Census should help the March payroll data. For this reason, the nonfarm payroll data released on Friday is expected to reflect a gain of 189,000 jobs.

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, a subsection of the Commerce Department, after peaking at $321 billion in 2000 it then began a precipitous decline, dropping to $167 billion in 2001 then to $84 billion in 2002 and $64 billion in 2003. This figure has since recovered jumping to $184 billion in 2006; however, it is still meaningfully below the 2000 peak, with the upswing being very erratic from year-to-year, suggesting many countries are still hesitant to invest in the U.S.

The decline in foreign direct investment has had an impact on U.S. employment data as well. The number of Americans employed by foreign companies within the U.S. from 2000 to 2005 is down, declining from 5.7 million to 5.1 million. This is not a good number when considering the US economy has had four solid years of growth. Even with a downturn in foreign direct investment one would expect, purely from inertia, employment to have gone up.

Treasury Secretary Paulson is attempting to put the foreign direct investment tide on a sustainable uptrend, albeit doing so with a political touch. Paulson needs to soften the blow many foreigners felt following the Bush Administration's unilateral withdrawal from the Kyoto agreement, the Dubai Ports World debacle and the tough scrutiny of the Alcatel-Lucent ADS (NYSE: ALU) transaction which all left foreigners with a bad taste in their mouths.

Historically, even during good times, foreigners like to allocate a good portion of their new-found wealth into the U.S. Despite cheaper labor costs in emerging-market economies like China and India, the U.S. has a highly productive labor force, a society which produces millions of college educated students each year, a very solid currency and a flexible real estate market to construct buildings or plants in rural or urban areas. These are all attributes that can be found in few other major cosmopolitan cities.

Paulson's actions suggest the U.S. has a lot of fences that need mending. Forget the trade deficit, focus on foreign direct investment numbers to get a real sense of what the world thinks of the U.S.

What this market needs more than anything else is its own theme song, something that accurately reflects the current mood of investors. Here are a couple of ideas: "Upside Down" by Diana Ross, "Love Rollercoaster" by the Ohio Players, "Enter Sandman" by Metalica or "Sugar We're Going Down" by Fall Out Boy. None of them seem quite right though. If anyone has any suggestions, let me know.

Getting back to the market, stocks are headed down again. ADP Employer Services releases its report at 8:15 a.m. Eastern time, that may show that companies in the U.S. added 100,000 jobs in February, the slowest pace of increase since September, according to Bloomberg News. The Federal Reserve releases its beige book at 2 p.m. today. Meanwhile, stock futures are trading down.

How about "Signs" by the Five Man Electrical Band for the market's theme song?

In other news, Nikko Cordial Group's largest shareholder rejected Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C) $10.8 billion buyout bid as too low. Several other big shareholders including Chicago-based Harris Associates made the same complaint, according to Bloomberg.

Dell Inc. (NYSE:DELL) in considering offering the free Linux operating system as an alternative to Microsoft Corp.'s (NASDAQ:MSFT) Windows. Consumers angry at Dell's poor quality machines now have an alternative to Microsoft's mediocre software.

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has privately questioned recent testimony about Sirius Satellite Radio Inc.'s (NASDAQ:SIRI) acquisition -- not a merger -- of XM Satellite Radio Inc. (NASDAQ:XMSR), according to the New York Times. Martin questioned Sirius CEO's Mel Karmazin's claim that subscribers would get more programming for the same monthly rate.