The major markets ended down this week, breaking the Dow and Nasdaq’s streak of eight up weeks.  Goldman Sachs’ legal woes combined with worries about foreign countries’ debt obligations to mete out a pummeling: The Dow ended the week down 1.75%, the S&P 2.50%, and the Nasdaq 2.73%.

“Greece” was the buzzword this week, and we believe “Spain” may be it next week.  Standard and Poor’s downgraded Spain’s debt rating this week, and the country’s statistics agency revealed that their unemployment level has risen above 20%.  Spain and Portugal are the new economies to watch, and we continue to keep an eye on Greece.

Should these countries’ problems worsen, the United States faces several issues. First, we lose the countries as customers, as they are importers of our goods. The contagion effect will see the problems spread to other Euro nations, exacerbating the problem.  And should the financial crisis reignite in Europe, it could lead to another credit crisis.

Next week is a heavy week for financial data. We will get data from the ISM, figures on auto sales and productivity, and April’s unemployment data.  187,000 jobs are forecast to have been created; such a figure would point strongly in the direction of recovery.

Starting this week, we will close each Week in review with a factoid. Did you know the term “blog” is a shortening of “web log”? There is an opinion at the firm that this was due to pure laziness on the part of bloggers.