This week, major financial institutions one by one revealed their bank earnings for the last quarter of 2009.

One week officially into the year, economic data reveal mixed signals as to what the country can expect for this year. Is a recovery really in the offing or will the wait extend to beyond the year 2010?

It was a big week for the Federal Reserve and in particular, Chairman Ben Bernanke. First, he was chosen as Time Magazine's Person of the Year.

For the third straight week, interest rates for 30-year home loans rose to 5.03%, up from 5.00% only a week before, according to mortgage firm Freddie Mac. Despite this development, mortgage rates are still attractive enough for potential home buyers or those looking for a refinance to take notice.

Even as some CD averages inched downward the past week, our best CD rates remain the same including the banks offering them.

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.

With the government set to release the figures for consumer spending and income any time now, hopes are high that the data will further strengthen growing prospects that the longest recession since World War II is finally ending.

It was a relatively quiet week for CDs and this is reflected in how CD rate averages ended up. Granted, there are a few ticks either going up or down but on the whole, CDs remained at their low levels.

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.