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The number of people filing for unemployment benefits hit a 26-year high last week, as the deepening recession forced more employers to cut jobs.

First-time claims for unemployment rose 5.4 percent, to 586,000 for the week ending Dec. 20, the Labor Department reported this morning. The last time claims were that high was Nov. 27, 1982. The four-week moving average, which is a less volatile indicator, rose to 558,000 from 544,250, also a 26-year high.

Orders for durable goods, such as appliances and televisions, dropped 1 percent to $186.9 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau said today. It was the fourth consecutive monthly drop but a much smaller decline than the 8.4 percent drop in October, thanks largely to orders for defense-related goods. Excluding those, which can vary widely quarter to quarter, new orders decreased by 0.9 percent.

Prices fell 1.1 percent last month, compared with 0.5 percent, the Commerce Department reported today. Much of that was due to falling gasoline and food prices. When food and energy are excluded, prices were actually flat.

Consumer spending continued to decline in November, falling 0.6 percent, even as consumers benefited from falling gasoline prices and retailers attempted to lure them into stores with deep discounts in an effort to salvage the holiday shopping season.

Retailers might have succeeded to an extent. November's drop was smaller than the 1 percent drop in spending in October. But just as they did in October, consumers also kept a chunk of their savings at the pump in their pockets. Personal savings as a percentage of disposable income was 2.8 percent in November, compared with 2.4 in October.

What can your genome tell you about yourself?

High school genetics taught me a thing or two: I would never have red-headed children, and that growth spurt I hoped would eventually happen was, at best, a remote possibility.

But it turns out our DNA can tell us more than just our hair color or height. A year and a half ago, my family took part in the Genographic Project, a nonprofit collaboration between National Geographic and IBM (nyse: IBM - news - people ), aiming to discover the migratory patterns of human groups out of Africa. My cousin volunteered her genetic data, swiped her cheek with a cotton swab and sent it off to a lab for DNA analysis. I already knew my immediate ancestors were Roman Catholics from Spain. But it turned out they took a circuitous route to the Iberian Peninsula: from Eastern Europe to Scandinavia to probably France before settling near Barcelona.

Science has evolved rapidly since the Genographic Project launched in 2005. Now, you can simply spit into a vial and send it off to several genetic-testing start-ups, such as 23andme and the nonprofit Personal Genome Project. These companies will tell you some interesting stuff--not just the migratory patterns of your ancestors but your predispositions for certain diseases or why you don't like Brussels sprouts (a sliver of DNA that allows you to taste a bitter compound in vegetables).

"For science and individual health and identity, I think we're in a key time," says Mary Sue Kelly, a 63-year-old retired psychiatrist who has had her DNA analyzed by the Genographic Project and Navigenics, a disease-focused genetic-testing start-up. "I've made the analogy of when the first mirror was seen--that must have flipped out a whole bunch of people for a long time, or when the first camera came. I think this is as illuminating as that--the first time you saw yourself and just 'Oh my word, that's what I look like?' "

My results from the Genographic Project didn't quite rock my world, but they were surprising. "Guess what we are," my aunt exclaimed when the results came in. I had always thought, due to my grandmother's darker complexion, that I was descended from Arabs who had come to Spain during the expansion of the Ottoman Empire. But I was wrong. "We're Jewish," my aunt said, as my grandmother shook her head incredulously in the seat across from us. "Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews." I briefly wondered if this explained my attraction for Jewish men, shrugged and went back to my book.

I recently, however, decided to dig a little deeper. A search on Ashkenazi Jews brings up some fascinating details--we're really smart, and we were heavily involved in the ostrich-feather trade. But Ashkenazi Jews are also susceptible to a host of scary-sounding genetic diseases, such as Fanconi anemia--associated with short stature (check); bone marrow failure (yikes, I hope not); a predisposition to leukemia and other cancers (my mother had cancer); and Cystic Fibrosis.

Since the Genographic Project is an anthropological study, it doesn't tell me what chance I have of developing any of these diseases. But other genetic-testing companies can, at least to some extent.

In June, a couple of Dutch energy researchers released a fascinating, long-gestating report on high oil prices. At the time, oil was selling for about $130 a barrel, and the authors, neatly dissecting the market, argued that prices were only going to get worse. Just the next month, they did rise — to $147 a barrel.

But, as O and G readers know, there was good reason to argue the other way at least in the short term – Ed Morse, now shifted from defunct Lehman over to LCM Commodities, asserted correctly that we were in for a considerable price correction.

So, with prices having gone strongly down, as Morse forecast, I made a phone call to the report’s lead author – Jan-Hein Jesse, whom I met last year at an OPEC meeting in Vienna – and asked whether he thinks his thesis still holds. I.E., is another price spike coming down the road?

The answer, Jesse replied, is probably yes. The ‘probably’ covers the event that we are headed into a long, deep depression, in which case all such previously composed economic analyses are off the table, and one must reassess the facts afresh.

But if in the next two or three years we come out of recession in fair economic shape, look for another steep rise in oil and gasoline prices.

Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, has been arguing the same point while making the rounds last week and this week in Washington and elsewhere. He’s been explaining the IEA’s latest World Energy Outlook, which is just as bleak as Jesse’s paper. Jesse wrote the paper with Coby van der Linde.

In short, demand in China, India and elsewhere in the developing world is probably going to roar back and outstrip supply in 2011 or beyond.

That alone will push prices back up. But oil companies also are now responding to $50 oil by shelving oilfield development projects. So, as Jesse told me, “In 2010 or 2011, we will be in the same situation as [the high prices of] last year. Then we will start all over again [in an energy crisis], but it will be much more difficult.”

One interesting observation of Jesse’s is that price no longer works as a stimulant in the other direction – high prices don’t necessarily motivate oil producers to flood the market with supply, and thus tamp down the upward motion of prices. That’s because almost all the available new oilfields are controlled by national oil companies like Saudi Aramco, Russia’s Gazprom and Venezuela’s PDVSA. Unlike oil companies such as Exxon and BP, which if they can are driven to maximize profit by producing more oil when prices are high, these national companies earn what they need from the higher prices, and let the rest of the oil sit in the ground.

In order to meet rising demand starting in 2011 and beyond, Jesse wrote, these producers – the companies and countries – will have to bring twice as much newly found oil onto the market in the next 22 years than what they did in the last 22 years. Meaning they will have to find and deliver 70 million barrels a day of new supply to the market. Almost no one thinks that is possible.

Jesse’s ultimate forecast is that the West – the U.S. and Europe – are going to have to use a lot less oil in order to make way for rising demand in China, India and elsewhere. If they don’t, he says, look for geopolitical tension, and another possible deep and prolonged recession. The coming energy shortages are bound to produce “sometimes confrontational relationships” between the world’s main oil consumers and the petro-states, the authors write.

Jesse and the IEA come to the same conclusion – the current global energy model isn’t sustainable. In order to avoid “the nasty side of oil scarcity,” Jesse and his co-author write, OPEC and other petro-states need to produce more oil, and the West needs to purse efficiency and the development of alternative energy.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Stocks surged Monday, pushing the Dow back above the 9,000 level, as investors welcomed talk of a second economic stimulus plan and an improvement in key lending rates.

The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) added 413 points, or 4.7% according to early tallies. The Standard & Poor's 500 (SPX) index gained 4.8%. The Nasdaq composite (COMP) added 3.4%.

After the close, American Express (AXP, Fortune 500) reported quarterly earnings from continuing operations of 74 cents per share, topping forecasts of 59 cents and down from 94 cents a year earlier. The company reported revenue of $7.2 billion versus forecasts for $7.31 billion.

Investors cheered comments from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke that suggested a second economic stimulus package could be up for discussion. Additionally, comments from Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and an improvement in lending rates added heft to bets that the credit market freeze is starting to thaw.

But the volatility of recent weeks isn't over, analysts said. Monday's gains reflected the need for traders to take a break from last week's wild swings, if nothing else, said Dean Barber, president at Barber Financial Group.

He said that the huge Dow swings last week of sometimes 1,000 or more points in a single session - between the highs and the lows - have really worn people out.

"I think there's a sense that the selling has gotten overdone, so you're seeing an advance today," Barber said.

"But people shouldn't think that means that we're moving up from here on out," he said. "I think we're still in for a rough ride going forward."

In testimony before the House Budget Committee, Bernanke noted that "with the economy likely to be weak for several quarters and with some risk of a protracted slowdown, consideration of a fiscal package by the Congress at this juncture seems appropriate."

The Bush administration said it was open to the idea. Congressional Democrats have previously said a second stimulus package is needed.

Shortly after Bernanke's speech, Secretary Treasury Henry Paulson gave a statement that a "broad group of banks" is interested in participating in the government's plan to invest $250 billion directly into lending institutions. Paulson also reiterated that the investments should eventually earn a good return for taxpayers.

These announcements helped propel Wall Street. But on a broader level, stocks were up because investors were starting to express optimism, said Dave Rovelli, managing director of U.S. equity trading at Canaccord Adams.

He said investors were encouraged by a weekend cover story from financial weekly Barron's that suggested that the recession won't drag on as long as feared. However, the main factor restoring confidence was an improvement in lending rates over the past week, he said.

"The credit market is the most important thing right now," he said. "We need to see the banks lending to each other again."

He added that the recent drop in Libor, a key bank lending rate, on both an overnight and three-month level, was critical: "We're seeing that the government's efforts are starting to work," Rovelli said.

The morning brought an improved report on the economy as well. The September index of leading economic indicators (LEI) rose 0.3% after falling a revised 0.9% in the previous month. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com thought LEI would fall 0.1%. (Full story)

Stocks slipped Friday at the end of a volatile week as recession fears were countered by Google's earnings and bullish comments from influential billionaire Warren Buffett.

But Wall Street managed to post gains for the week, which included the Dow's biggest one-day point gain ever and the second-biggest point loss ever. For the week, the Dow and S&P 500 both added 4.7% and the Nasdaq added 3.6%.

Credit market: Lending rates improved Monday, building on last week's recovery, as the global initiatives undertaken continued to have an impact.

The South Korean and Dutch governments have now joined the list of nations trying to stem the global financial crisis by making billions in capital available to banks. Several key lending measures reacted, with shorter-term

Libor, the overnight bank-to-bank lending rate, fell to 1.51% from 1.67% late Friday, according to Bloomberg.com, a more than four-year low. The three-month Libor, what banks charge each other to borrow for three months, fell to 4.06% from 4.42% Friday.

Another indicator, the Libor-OIS spread, a measure of cash scarcity, fell to 2.93% from 3.28% Friday.

The TED spread, which is the difference between what banks pay to borrow from each other for three months and what the Treasury pays, narrowed to 2.97% from 3.63% Friday. The spread hit a record 4.65% earlier this month. The wider the spread, the more reluctant banks are to lend to each other.

Treasury prices rallied, lowering the yield on the 10-year note to 3.85% from 3.92% late Friday. Treasury prices and yields move in opposite directions.

The yield on the 3-month Treasury bill, seen as the safest place to put money in the short term, rose to 1.09% from 0.80% late Friday as investors began to pull money out of the safer investment and put it back in stocks. Last month, the yield on the 3-month bill skidded to a 68-year low around 0%.

Company news: AIG (AIG, Fortune 500) said it will start selling off pieces of its business by the end of the year. The troubled insurer also said it expects to be able to repay the $85 billion bridge loan it got from the government last month after it nearly collapsed. AIG shares gained 6%. (Full story)

Ericsson (ERICY) reported weaker profit and higher revenue versus a year earlier, both of which topped estimates. Shares of the telecom gear maker rallied 15%.

Halliburton (HAL, Fortune 500) said it swung to a net loss in the third quartet on debt charges and the impact of a tough hurricane season. However without one-time items, the oilfield services provider reported a profit that was higher than what analysts were expecting. The stock gained 8% and gave a lift to other oil services firms.

Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) slipped after the Wall Street Journal said the company could announce layoffs and other cost-cutting measures Tuesday when it releases quarterly results.

Other markets: U.S. light crude oil for November delivery rose $2.40 to $74.25 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange after hitting a 13-month low last week.

Bets that demand is slowing have sent oil prices lower since crude hit an all-time high of $147.27 a barrel on July 11. So far, instead of providing relief to investors, the decline has been seen as another indication of the global economic slowdown.

Gasoline prices fell another 3.1 cents overnight, to a national average of $2.923 a gallon, according to a survey of credit card activity by motorist group AAA. It was the 33rd consecutive day that prices have decreased - in the past month alone, they're down more than 93 cents a gallon.

COMEX gold for December delivery rose $2.30 to settle at $790 an ounce

Earlier this year, Steve Ribbing, who runs a family-style restaurant south of Buffalo, got fed up with the growing dent in his company's bottom line. The culprit? Egg prices, which have jumped nearly 50% over the past two years. Ribbing griped to his attorney, an act that ultimately led to a lawsuit against more than a dozen egg producers and the industry's trade group.

Critics say the price jump since 2006 was not particularly mysterious: egg producers, the plaintiffs contend, conspired to restrict supply as part of a broad scheme to boost prices. Ribbing's complaint moved from his lawyer to a large national firm, finally becoming a sweeping lawsuit that recently gained class-action status on behalf of restaurants, grocers, and other direct buyers nationwide. The litigation's targets include 13 of the nation's biggest egg producers, including Cal-Maine Foods (CALM), Pilgrim's Pride (PPC) and Rose Acre Farms, as well as a Georgia-based industry association, the United Egg Producers (UEP).

Justice Dept. Is Investigating

The average retail price of a dozen eggs, which had been stable for the better part of a decade, soared to $2.20 per dozen in March, after climbing from $1.63 in 2007 and $1.30 in 2006, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Egg producers blame the increase on surging feed and fuel costs, although prices have retreated 15% since March, to $1.85 per dozen. The restaurant lawsuit filed three weeks ago in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia is one of six separate suits facing the egg industry. Some name a handful of companies while others, like the T.K. Ribbing's restaurant suit, target 16 major producers and interest groups. The suits generally allege similar schemes to raise prices, but the detailed Ribbing suit delves deepest and covers the broadest part of the industry.

The swift rise in egg prices has also caught the attention of the Justice Dept., which is "investigating the possibility of price fixing in the egg products industry," says DOJ spokeswoman Gina Talamona, declining further comment. All of the major egg producers either refused comment or didn't respond to BusinessWeek's requests for comment.

The producers all belong to the United Egg Producers cooperative, which in 2000 enacted an Animal Care Certified Program to improve hens' conditions by giving them more space in cages. Plaintiffs say the program was designed solely to lift egg prices by curtailing egg supplies. The total U.S. supply, which grew steadily from 7.1 billion dozen eggs in 2000 to a peak of 7.6 billion dozen in 2006, is down to 7.5 billion dozen this year, according to the U.S. Agriculture Dept. "The only portion of the program which they enforce are the ones restricting the total number of hens and production," says Jonathan Lovvorn, vice-president and chief counsel of the Humane Society of the U.S. "You violate that, they kick you out immediately." He says the co-op ignores "all kinds of other things you can do to animals—not providing proper veterinary care, letting animals die without proper food or water. Those are things we've seen."

UEP spokesman Mitch Head calls allegations that the welfare program was aimed at trimming hen numbers "ludicrous." "There's no provision for any farmer to not build more houses, add more conventional cages, add cage-free or free-range [hens]; they could've added as many as they wanted to," Head says. The program results in fewer hen diseases and lower mortality, and improves food safety, he said. "This is not what was better for the farmer. It was better for the hens and for our consumers."