After the rates cuts that CDs had at the close of last week, it's refreshing to see current CD rate averages without any of the "red marks" that were present in the previous week's comparison table.

CD rates took quite a beating this week as averages for 6-month and 12-month CDs plunged to lower depths, from 1.14% to 1.10% APY and 1.41% to 1.38%  APY respectively. Rate averages for long term CDs also fell, albeit only by a modest 0.01%.

First, some good news. Job unemployment reports for July are already out, showing that employers last month only cut down a total of 247,000 jobs. That's still a lot of jobs of course, but definitely lower than the expected 320,000 job losses that analysts have earlier predicted.