Thursday's positive economic data point comes from Fidelity Investment's Director of Economic Analysis Lisa Emsbo-Mattingly.

Emsbo-Mattingly certainly is not in the jobless recovery camp. The U.S. experienced sluggish job growth emerging from the 1990 and 2001 recessions. Emsbo-Mattingly does not expect a repeat in 2010.

In an interview published at Fidelity.com, Emsbo-Mattingly said she expects this recovery to be "a job-full one." Talk about optimistic, contrarian arguments.

DealBook reports that Fidelity Investments has agreed to buy back $300 million worth of auction-rate securities (ARS). This settlement is a first in the sense that the previous redeemers were ARS issuers. Fidelity is considered to be "downstream" from the issuers. And its decision to settle puts pressure on other downstream participants such as Oppenheimer and Raymond James.

Exactly what has Fidelity agreed to do? "According to the terms of the deal, the first struck with a 'downstream' seller of these securities, Fidelity will not pay a fine. The firm will buy back auction-rate securities from individuals, charities and institutional investors alike, making no distinction among investor classes, as previous settlements with other firms have," DealBook writes.

Of the $330 billion in ARS that were issued, only 10% have been redeemed so far -- "the big banks have repurchased more than $35 billion of the securities and paid more than $360 million in fines," according to DealBook. I am impressed that regulators are continuing to push hard to get ARS issuers to take care of these investors given all the distraction from the weekly collapse of one major financial institution after another.

Just a couple weeks ago, it looked like the $26 billion buyout deal for Clear Channel Communications (NYSE: CCU) was dead.

But then again, doing such a deal is expensive and time-consuming. So why walk away? Maybe try to find a way to get things back on track?

Well, according to a piece in today's Wall Street Journal, the deal may actually get done.

Basically, the main opposition has come from two major shareholders: Fidelity Investments and Highfields Capital Management. They have a fiduciary responsibility to get the best value for their investors, right?

That means bidding things up. And it appears that Clear Channels buyers -- Bain Capital and Thomas H. Lee Partners -- will do just that. How much? The amount is about 20 cents to $39.20 per share.

There is something else: the existing shareholders will get a chance to participate in the private company, up to 30%. So perhaps when you blend things together, the ultimate value is higher than just 20 cents per share.

And with Clear Channel's stock at about $37.79, it does look like the Street is betting that there will indeed be a deal.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

Since the beginning of the year, shares of Yahoo!, Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) have lost 30% as the stock has severely underperformed the broad market. To put this in perspective, shares of Google, Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) have gained nearly 18% over the same period.

Now we find that institutions may be in the process of giving up on the stock as Fidelity Investments dumped 16 million shares [subscription required] in recent weeks. It is also noted that Fidelity is not the only institutional shareholder to bail out of the stock this year. It would stand to reason that Fidelity's selling has helped to pressure the stock, but as a contrarian, my ears perk up when I hear chatter about signs of heavy selling.

A rush to the exits can be a sign of capitulation, a situation where selling pressure is flushed out of the system. Once the selling has run its course, you have the potential for buying demand once again to assert itself and boost the shares.

Digging a little deeper into Yahoo!, however, shows that the stock may not yet be at the point where everyone has capitulated. According to Zacks, 14 of 23 analysts (61%) still rank the stock a "buy." I say "still" because the percentage of "buys" stood at 78% in January, when the stock was trading near multi-year highs.

Nick Perry is an analyst with Schaeffer's Investment Research.