U.S. health officials say swine flu could strike up to 40 percent of Americans over the next two years and as many as several hundred thousand could die if a vaccine campaign and other measures aren’t successful.

Those estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention mean about twice the number of people who usually get sick in a normal flu season would be struck by swine flu. Officials said those projections would drop if a new vaccine is ready and widely available, as U.S. officials expect.

The U.S. may have as many as 160 million doses of swine flu vaccine available sometime in October, and U.S. tests of the new vaccine are to start shortly, federal officials said this week.

The infection estimates are based on a flu pandemic from 1957, which killed nearly 70,000 in the United States but was not as severe as the infamous Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-19. But influenza is notoriously hard to predict. The number of deaths and illnesses would drop if the pandemic peters out or if efforts to slow its spread are successful, said CDC spokesman Tom Skinner.

The World Health Organization says as many as 2 billion people could become infected over the next two years — nearly one-third of the world population. The estimates look at potential impacts over a two-year period because past flu pandemics have occurred in waves over more than one year.

WHO officials believe the world is in the early phase of the new pandemic.

The number of properties for rent in Spain climbed 55 percent in the past two years to 3.3 million, the highest since the Ministry of Housing started collecting the data in 2004. Rents in cities, including Madrid and Barcelona, are falling for the first time in seven years with declines of as much as 8 percent, according to Madrid-based property research firm Idealista.com.

“Those who need to sell but can’t are being forced to lease,” said Fernando Encinar, co-founder and head of research at Idealista.com, Spain’s largest real estate Web site with 308,000 listings for rent and purchase. “We haven’t seen this number of properties for rent since the 1950s.”

Spain built about 29 percent of new homes in the European Union from 2001 to 2007, even as it represented just 9 percent of the population. The resulting glut of 1.5 million unsold houses and apartments sparked the end of a decade-long real estate and construction boom that accounted for about 20 percent of the country’s gross domestic product in 2007.

The ensuing housing slump has tipped the economy into the worst recession in 60 years with the unemployment rate climbing to 19 percent, the highest in the EU. Home sales fell by more than a third in the 12 months through May, the latest government data show.

Joblessness in Spain may reach 20.5 percent by the end of 2010, according to estimates from the European Commission.

“Redundancy is having a huge impact on home sales, hence many people are turning to renting,” said Ben May, an economist at Capital Economics Ltd. in London. “Even people who still have jobs are clearly going to be worried and those that are in a position to buy are waiting for prices to fall.”

Unemployment claims are not as good as the government makes them appear: the government makes big seasonal adjustments to the data that likely obfuscate that a lot of people actually are making new claims for unemployment. The most quoted headline number had a very big seasonal adjustment, which had the net effect of making it look like unemployment improved in the last two weeks.

Unemployments continues to climb towards the “magical” 10 %

GOOGLE last week unveiled plans to move into the PC operating-system business, taking direct aim at technology’s best franchise: Microsoft Windows.

Google will open-source the Chrome OS software, and give it to PC companies for nothing. That is certainly an alluring price, which is no doubt why Acer (2353.Taiwan), Lenovo(0992.Hong Kong), Asustek Computer (2357.Taiwan), Toshiba (6502.Tokyo) and HP (HPQ) have signed up to work with Google on the project.

If nothing else, the threat of a free Google OS could pressure Microsoft to cut the prices it charges these companies for Windows.

The software won’t be available for a year or so-a year during which Microsoft will be cranking out Windows 7, a well-reviewed and eagerly awaited version that debuts in October.

The battle is served….

“Dr. Laura D’Andrea Tyson echoed Vice President Biden’s weekend remark, observing that the US economic situation has turned out worse than what was forecast just six months ago. Interestingly, she also went further and suggested that, with hindsight, the government’s fiscal stimulus package was too small and a new one should be considered.

Tyson’s comments are sure to fuel a debate that will place policymakers in an even more challenging situation; and this becomes even more intriguing if you agree that “consensus” currently underestimates how high the US unemployment rate will go AND how long it will persist at unusually high levels.” Said Mohamed El Erian

The Tyson remarks are a vivid illustration of the extent to which the emphasis of the policy debate is shifting from the normalization of the financial markets to countering a worse-than-expected deterioration in jobs and wages. Indeed, while 2008 was about the serial unthinkables in the financial markets, this year is all about the lagged economic, political and institutional effects.

A golden cross occurs when the 50-day moving average crosses above the 200-day moving average. And while this analysis is typically applied to the Standard & Poor’s 500 or, to a lesser degree, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, it is finding a home with other indexes and even other asset classes.

THE analysis of the S&P 500 shows that there have been no golden or black cross failures since 1998 when the market was rocked by the Asian currency crisis.

There has also been no golden cross signal in today’s market .