The parallels between the current recovery and the "jobless recovery" of 2003-2004 just keep coming.

Readers may remember the period, marked by investors' "not too hot, not too cold" bias. Stocks would sell-off if economic data was too good, because it implied the Greenspan Fed would reverse its interest rate policy.

Conversely, data that hugged the flat line, came in slightly positive, or even slightly negative, would rally stocks because it meant there was no danger of an end to the low interest rate environment.

Investors were too busy watching stocks get pounded yesterday to notice a bit of good news. Factory orders rose 1.3%. That was more than twice what economists were expecting.   

That prompted Pierpont Securities chief economist Stephen Stanley to say “Manufacturing is unambiguously the strongest part of the economy…” He’s not kidding.   

 Weed out the 67% decline in domestic aircraft orders and you get a 3.1% jump in factory orders. That’s the biggest gain since 2005.

You might have heard the news on Friday about Goldman Sachs’ recent trouble with the SEC. The SEC is suing Goldman for defrauding investors of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). The fraud comes in because Goldman (allegedly) did not disclose to CDO investors that Paulson & Co. helped put together these investments while at the same time betting against them.

That’s kind of like a car dealership selling you a car that was assembled by a mechanic who also happens to be betting the drive train will fail.

It seems that Paulson’s foresight in betting against mortgage backed securities issued by Goldman Sachs has his fund under scrutiny from the SEC as well.

This scrutiny is making some people nervous about owning the same gold securities as Paulson & Co – which is having a downward effect on all gold securities, not least of which is gold itself.