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By Dan Carney, msnbc.com contributor

President Obama is on cruise control toward his party’s nomination to run for reelection, but Tim O’Boyle is hoping to capitalize on Obama’s old cruise-mobile -- a 2005 Chrysler 300C.

Yeah, it’s got a Hemi in it. That’s probably what led aspiring presidential candidate Obama to ditch the muscle car in favor of a Ford Escape hybrid to shore up his green credentials back in 2008.

These days Obama travels in a very un-green armored Cadillac for security reasons (cast aside like a forgotten girlfriend is the Chrysler). But O’Boyle has the car and hopes that an Obama enthusiast or history buff is willing to pay a million dollars for it on eBay. (I think you have to say “million” like Dr. Evil when you are talking about that much money for a car.)

O’Boyle says he tried to sell the car on eBay a few years ago, but that pranksters ran the bidding up to $100 million before eBay shut down the auction. With the election season heating up, he thought now might be a good time to try again. To keep out the pranksters, this time the auction requires a $2,000 good-faith deposit in order to even bid. That may have chased away prospective buyers, because in an auction that ended Wednesday, Jan. 25, there were no bidders. O’Boyle says he has relisted it hoping that another week will do the trick.

If not, he could wait until the fall, when the election gets really active.

Meanwhile, of course, people want to be sure that a car whose value lies in the identity of its previous owner was really owned by the president. In Illinois when a car changes hands, the title goes back to the state, so O’Boyle doesn’t have the original title with Obama’s name on it, but he has a copy made by the dealer when Obama traded it in. And when he did drive the car, it wasn’t actually titled in his name because it was leased in the name of “a government agency,” according to O’Boyle. But the documentation does show that the car was registered to Obama even if, as a lease car, it didn’t technically belong to the then-senator from Illinois.

Still, one million bucks could be a stretch. The president’s previous vehicle, a 2000 Jeep Grand Cherokee, sold for just $26,000, according to the New York Times.

Would you pay $1 million for a 2005 Chrysler 300C? Share your thoughts on Facebook.

More automotive news:

Audi's bloody Super Bowl commercial

Ford profit hit by commodity costs, Europe 

Chevy Volt caught in Washington's crossfire 

NEW YORK — The Dow posted its first weekly loss this year on Friday as lackluster earnings from blue-chip companies and weaker-than-expected data on U.S. economic growth disappointed investors.

The Dow fell as Chevron announced earnings that were below Wall Street's estimates and Procter & Gamble cut its full-year profit forecast because of the strong dollar.

The Commerce Department said U.S. gross domestic product expanded at its fastest pace in 1-1/2 years in the last quarter of 2011, but the 2.8 percent rise fell short of economists' expectations.

In addition, a strong rebuilding of inventories and weak spending by businesses in the GDP report pointed to slower growth early this year, denting recent optimism about an improving economy.

Larry McMillan, president of McMillan Analysis Corp., said that after only four down days in January, the stock market is overbought.

"A short-term correction should begin almost immediately. But the intermediate-term bullish trend should be able to reassert itself," McMillian said.

In company news, Facebook plans to file documents as early as Wednesday for a highly anticipated initial public offering that will value the world's largest social network at between $75 billion and $100 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cited unidentified sources.

According to preliminary calculations, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 65.51 points, or 0.51 percent, at 12,669.12. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index dipped 0.77 points, or 0.06 percent, at 1,317.66. The Nasdaq Composite Index advanced 11.74 points, or 0.42 percent, at 2,817.02.

But losses were curbed as U.S. Federal Reserve statements this week and economic data kept investors alert for the possibility of another round of monetary stimulus known as quantitative easing, or QE3.

"Out of what the Fed said, you can expect some negative numbers because the Fed obviously saw what the GDP numbers are and they anticipate a slowdown," said Sean Kraus, chief investment officer at CitizensTrust in Pasadena, California.

If the Fed does resort to QE3 to stimulate growth, investors "don't want to be caught flat-footed and be out of risky assets," Kraus said.

Chevron, the No. 2 U.S. oil company, fell 2.3 percent to $104.10 and was the biggest drag on the Dow. The NYSEArca oil index lost 0.7 percent.

Consumer product company Procter & Gamble dipped 0.9 percent to $64.25.

Ford Motor Co. shares fell 3.8 percent to $12.25 after the carmaker reported a lower-than-expected fourth-quarter profit on higher commodity costs and losses in Europe and Asia.

Network equipment makers Juniper Networks Inc. and Riverbed Technologies Inc. gave first-quarter outlooks after the close Thursday that were below expectations. Juniper fell 3 percent to $21.71 while Riverbed slid 18.8 percent to $24.30.

According to Thomson Reuters data, 59 percent of 184 S&P 500 companies reporting earnings through Friday have topped analysts' estimates, below the beat rate of about 70 percent seen at this stage of earnings season in recent quarters.

Utilities were the worst performing among S&P sectors after results from American Electric Power Co Inc and Dominion Resources. American Electric was off 3.1 percent to $40.02, while Dominion fell 2.4 percent to $49.61. The S&P utilities index fell 1.4 percent.

Eastman Chemical Co offered to buy specialty chemical maker Solutia Inc for about $3.38 billion in cash and stock to extend its reach in emerging markets, particularly the Asia-Pacific region. Solutia shares jumped about 40 percent to $27.30 and Eastman shares gained 6.4 percent to $50.13.

Negotiations between Greece and its private creditors on a debt swap deal made progress on Friday and will continue over the weekend, a senior Greek government official said. Renewed concern about the crisis has troubled markets this week.

Home prices have fallen by a third since 2006, creating tremendous bargains for home buyers. Mortgage rates are at rock-bottom lows, making houses more affordable than they have been in decades. Yet home sales last year fell to the lowest levels since the government began keeping records in 1963.

One big reason: mortgage bankers have gotten a lot choosier about approving loans, according to a report by Goldman Sachs economists Hui Shan and Jari Stehn. By some measures, they're pickier than they were before the housing boom took off. 

With anecdotal evidence showing that home mortgages are harder to get, the economists crunched Federal Reserve data to show just how much tighter lending standards have become. Using the results of the Fed's survey of loan officers, the report found that lending standards rose sharply after the mortgage market collapsed and the financial system imploded in 2008. Since the recession ended in 2009, lenders haven’t eased their tight grip on mortgage money.

Part of the reason is that there’s less money available to lend. During the housing boom, as brokers produced a flood of new mortgages, Wall Street bankers churned out a torrent of mortgage-backed bonds for investors waiting to snap them up. That market has all but vanished; 90 percent of new mortgages written today are backed by the government.   

The new mortgage pipeline also has slowed because it is clogged with paperwork. These days, you’ll have to fill out many more forms and produce a lot more documentation, on average, just to get your loan considered.

The percent of loans that required “full documentation” declined steadily from 2000 through 2006, hitting a low of less than 60 percent. Those “no-doc” loans were a big part of the reason mortgage bankers made the bad underwriting decisions that created the mortgage mess. Today, nearly 90 percent of mortgage applications require full documentation. That’s much higher than the pre-bubble level.

You’ll also have to show a much higher credit score than you did in the go-go days of the housing boom. In a separate report, Mortgage Marvel, an online mortgage-shopping website, analyzed data from more than 700,000 mortgage applications filed last year and found that the average FICO score was 730. That’s a significant jump from the days when borrowers with scores in the high 500s were routinely steered to high-cost subprime loans.

Applications with highest credit scores concentrated in California, Oregon, Wisconsin, District of Columbia and Hawaii, the company said. The states with the lowest credit scores were Mississippi, Arkansas, West Virginia, Louisiana  and Oklahoma.

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When companies go bankrupt, the misery is shared among many: Bond holders are wiped out, retirees see their pensions and benefits vanish, and employees lose their jobs.

But some feel no pain at all: CEOs and other top executives of companies that go through Chapter 11 receive robust compensation in the form of salary, stock grants and other benefits.

In some cases, they earn even more money than they did before the filing, even while other stakeholders suffer. It's the most unlikely fast-track to a fat payout ever, and it goes on in spite of federal legislation meant to crack down on corporate honchos feasting while everyone else fights over crumbs. 

It wasn't supposed to be like this. In the wake of corporate catastrophes such as Enron, Congress passed legislation aimed at preventing companies from paying retention bonuses to executives at firms going through Chapter 11. 

"You can't pay someone for just staying at a bankrupt company," said Robert Jackson, an associate professor at Columbia Law School at Columbia University, and former advisory to senior Treasury officials on executive compensation during the financial crisis. "But that's different from paying them from doing well at a bankrupt company," he said. 

That distinction has become a loophole. Since the law allows performance-based incentives, huge executive payouts have morphed over the years to be little more than retention bonuses by another name, according to critics who say executives net outsized payouts even when they negotiate agreements that leave stakeholders out in the cold.

"There seems to be no sense of accountability at this level," said Steven Kropp, a professor at Roger Williams University School of Law. "In most of these cases, the unsecured creditors aren't being paid back in full, employees are being laid off, and in addition, they're finding their health insurance and pensions diminished." An investigation by The Wall Street Journal found that median compensation of CEOs at 21 companies that filed for bankruptcy was $8.7 million, just $400,000 less than the median compensation earned by CEOs at healthy companies. 

Companies are required to go to court and argue their case for big bonuses with the bankruptcy judge, explaining why the CEO deserves the set level of compensation and what targets they must meet in order to earn their bonus. The problem is that often the bar is set so low that even lackluster performance will be measured as success. 

"It's all fine and well to say you're going to pay people for performance, but the key is what kind of performance," Jackson said. "It's very hard for a judge to know if an earnings target is easy or hard to hit. Are they just window dressings?" To make this determination, the court has to rely on evidence from the company's executives and lawyers, who may have an incentive to give themselves easy assignments.

Judges also have to rely on the input of compensation experts — also hired by the company — to know if the bonuses being proposed are appropriate for the industry and the task at hand, which also raises the prospect of manipulation. 

To keep companies from taking advantage of this, Jackson said, bankruptcy courts could have their own industry-specific experts to vet the numbers being proposed by people on the company payroll. 

Critics of the current status quo say there are other legal ways to patch the ballooning-bonus loophole. "You could simply amend the bankruptcy code to preclude a company in bankruptcy from paying bonuses in excess of prior salary to its existing executives," John Coffee, a professor at Columbia Law School, said via email. "Or you could limit the amount of any additional income in excess of their prior compensation from the firm to some reasonable percentage." 

Kropp suggests using clawback provisions to cap executive compensation in the event of bankruptcy and funneling the recovered funds into employees' investment accounts. Even advocates of reforms like these, though, admit that they're a political no-go for lawmakers in today's contentious legislative environment. 

The argument in favor of big bonuses, even when they come at the expense of employees, retirees and other unsecured creditors, is that successfully guiding a company through bankruptcy and emerging on the other side is a challenging, risky job, and most CEOs would bolt without the promise of millions in cash and stock for their trouble.

But research done by Ethan Bernstein, a Kauffman Foundation Fellow on leave from Harvard Law School, shows that CEOs of financially troubled companies quit or are ousted at the same rate whether or not they file for bankruptcy or muddle through with private restructuring.

For some, this raises the troubling possibility that Chapter 11 has become a back door for CEOs to grant themselves raises, especially in light of the fact that the Journal's research found CEOs at some troubled firms actually earned more after filing for Chapter 11.

"My belief is that CEOs and other senior executives can panic a board with the implied threat that they might desert the sinking ship if some formula is not found to give them extraordinary pay for their service in a crisis," Coffee said. 

Pulling a teetering company back from the brink is hard, and it's an increasingly specialized job, which Bernstein said contributes to the high number — 37 percent — of CEOs brought on either during a bankruptcy reorganization or in the year leading up to it. 

He said key stakeholders want a "bankruptcy guru," and they're willing to shell out enormous sums for the services of a CEO they think can pull the most money out of a troubled company. The catch is that this slate of decision-makers increasingly includes big creditors, negotiating with the kind of clout once limited to shareholders. What a creditor sees as the best return on its investment may very well be a bloodbath for the company's rank-and-file.

Do you think these CEO compensation deals are fair? Share your thoughts on Facebook.

The U.S. economy perked up late last year as hiring accelerated and factories ramped up production. Unfortunately, a lot of what those factories made is still sitting in warehouses and on store shelves.

That doesn’t bode well for growth in the coming months.  

At first blush, the numbers posted by the Commerce Department for gross domestic product in the last three months of 2011 looked strong. Overall growth advanced by 2.8 percent on an annual basis, a little weaker than economists had expected based on a series of other positive economic reports. That was much better than the 1.8 percent pace in the third quarter and the best showing since the second quarter of 2010.

But much of the fourth quarter growth came from businesses restocking inventories, which swelled by $56.0 billion, adding nearly 2 percentage points to GDP growth. The so-called ”final sales” number, which tracks how much was actually sold, rose a meager 0.8 percent.

“The pickup in GDP growth doesn't look half as good when you realize that most of it was due to inventory accumulation," said Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics. “Despite the apparent improvement in some of the incoming economic data, it still looks like ... another disappointing year."

Ashworth is among a number of private economists who see the fourth quarter growth spurt easing this year. He expects to see U.S. GDP advance by just 1.5 percent in 2012.

Federal Reserve officials echoed that prediction this week, though they’re a bit more optimistic. The central bank is looking for growth of 2.7 percent in 2012, but the latest forecast was trimmed by two-tenths of a percentage point. The Fed expects unemployment to drop as low as 8.2 percent by the end of the year.

Vote: Will the economy continue to accelerate?

The lowered growth forecast prompted central bankers to extend their pledge to keep interest rates at or near zero for another year; they now expect to hold rates at rock bottom until at least 2014 to try to encourage businesses and consumers to borrow and spend more money.

Business investment slowed sharply in the fourth quarter after heavy spending earlier last year.

Consumers continued to do their part; consumer spending grew at a 2 percent annual rate, up a bit from the third quarter. Car sales zoomed ahead as the average age of the cars and light trucks on the road hit record levels. The replacement of those worn-out vehicles helped boost car sales by 14.8 percent.

Consumers are feeling a bit better about the outlook for the economy. A separate report Friday showed the University of Michigan consumer sentiment index edging up for the fourth straight month. But the level of confidence remains weak.

“Despite the rise, this and other confidence measures remain in recession territory due to global sovereign debt fear, Congressional dysfunction, and high food and energy prices,” said economist Mike Englund at Action Economics

Consumers have also fallen back on car loans and credit cards to maintain their spending. Consumer borrowing jumped by $20.4 billion in November, the Federal Reserve said Monday. That was the third straight increase and the largest monthly gain in a decade. Consumers have boosted borrowing in 13 of the past 14 months.

The gradual improvement in the job market may explain some of the rise in borrowing. But many households are also leaning harder on debt because their wages are rising as fast as the price of the goods and services they need to buy.

Personal incomes rose at an 0.8 percent annual rate, according to Friday’s GDP report, after falling for the last two quarters. Consumer prices are climbing at an annual rate of 3 percent, according to the latest government data.

Much of that spending appears to represent people buying goods, not services. That's a sign that households are sticking to necessities, according to Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisors.

“The clearest sign that households remain cautious was in services spending,” he said. “This is the largest component of consumer demand and it fairly budged.  People are not yet comfortable buying the little luxuries in life.”

With consumers tapped out and cautious, the economy faces other headwinds in the coming year. The housing industry remains stuck in the worst recession since the 1930s. A separate report Friday showed that the pace of new home sales fell in December, making 2011 the worst sales year since the Commerce Department first began collecting the data in 1963. Sales in December fell to a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 307,000 – less than half the 700,000 that economists say represents a healthy pace.

Slack sales have forced builders to slash prices, which has kept many would-be buyers on the fence until they see signs that the market has bottomed. The median sales prices for new homes dropped in December by 2.5 percent to $210,300.

Though ultra-low mortgage rates have made home buying more affordable than it has been in decades, mortgage bankers remain very choosy about to whom they’ll lend. Some 12 million potential “move-up” buyers are stuck with mortgages that are bigger than their homes are worth.

Growth in the fourth quarter was also held back by big cuts in government spending, which lopped 0.9 percent from fourth-quarter GDP.  That belt-tightening will likely continue.

What are your thoughts on the short term economic future? Share your thougts on Facebook.

NEW YORK — U.S. stocks slipped on Friday as data showed the U.S. economy grew less than expected in the fourth quarter, while lackluster earnings added pressure to the market, putting the Dow and S&P 500 on pace to end the week on a down note.

The Commerce Department said U.S. gross domestic product expanded at its fastest pace in 1-1/2 years in the last quarter of 2011 but fell shy of expectations. A strong rebuilding of inventories and weak spending by businesses pointed to slower growth early this year, denting recent optimism about an improving economy.

"Is it the three percent they were looking for? No, but the positive you will take out of it is it clearly moving in the right direction it is getting stronger than the last report," said Ken Polcari, managing director at ICAP Equities in New York.

"Now the question is can you really trust and believe this number because they have two more revisions and after they do some more work it gets revised lower."

Losses were curbed as U.S. Federal Reserve statements this week and economic data kept investors alert for the possibility of another round of monetary stimulus known as quantitative easing, or QE3.

"Out of what the Fed said, you can expect some negative numbers because the Fed obviously saw what the GDP numbers are and they anticipate a slowdown," said Sean Kraus, chief investment officer at CitizensTrust in Pasadena, California.

If the Fed does resort to QE3 to stimulate growth, investors "don't want to be caught flat-footed and be out of risky assets," Kraus said.

Chevron Corp fell 2.5 percent to $104 and was the biggest drag on the Dow after the No. 2 U.S. oil company posted lower earnings, missing Wall Street forecasts. The NYSEArca oil index lost 0.7 percent.

The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 93.09 points, or 0.73 percent, to 12,641.54. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index dropped 5.84 points, or 0.44 percent, to 1,312.59. The Nasdaq Composite Index gained 1.51 points, or 0.05 percent, to 2,806.79.

The declines put the Dow and S&P on track for their first weekly loss in the past four weeks.

Procter & Gamble Co dipped 1.3 percent to $63.98 after it said this year's profit would come in lower than previously expected due to the strong dollar.

Ford Motor Co shares fell 3.5 percent to $12.29 after the carmaker reported a lower-than-expected fourth-quarter profit on higher commodity costs and losses in Europe and Asia.

Network equipment makers Juniper Networks Inc and Riverbed Technologies Inc gave first-quarter outlooks after the close Thursday that were below expectations. Juniper fell 3.5 percent to $21.57 while Riverbed slid 19.5 percent to $24.06.

According to Thomson Reuters data, 58.7 percent of 184 S&P 500 companies reporting earnings through Friday have topped analysts' estimates, below the beat rate of about 70 percent seen at this stage of earnings season in recent quarters.

Utilities were the worst performing among S&P sectors after results from American Electric Power Co Inc and Dominion Resources. American Electric was off 3.1 percent to $40.02, while Dominion fell 2.2 percent to $49.71. The S&P utilities index fell 1.5 percent.

Eastman Chemical Co offered to buy specialty chemical maker Solutia Inc for about $3.38 billion in cash and stock to extend its reach in emerging markets, particularly the Asia-Pacific region. Solutia shares jumped 39.7 percent to $27.25 and Eastman shares gained 4.8 percent to $49.37.

Euro zone finance officials voiced optimism a deal to avert a disorderly Greek default was imminent. Renewed concern about the crisis has troubled markets this week. (Reporting By Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Kenneth Barry and Jeffrey Benkoe)

Paul Sakuma / AP

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg could be worth $20 billion if current estimates hold true.

By msnbc.com staff and wire

Updated at 5:25 p.m. ET

Facebook is poised to file papers as early as next week for an initial public offering that could be one of the biggest in history, creating hundreds if not thousands of instant millionaires, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

The highly anticipated IPO will value the world's largest social networking site at between $75 billion and $100 billion, the Journal reported on its website. So far the Journal appears to be alone with the report. Facebook declined to comment.

Founded in a Harvard dorm room in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and his friends, Facebook has grown into the world's biggest social network with over 800 million members. Facebook earned roughly $1.5 billion in operating profits on $3.8 billion in revenues last year, CNBC's Julia Boorstin reported, citing unidentified sources.

The impending IPO -- expected to raise $10 billion -- is a prized trophy for investment banks, setting up a fierce competition on Wall Street, particularly between Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, which are expected to be the two lead underwriters.

The IPO could come about three to four months after the filing, which likely would put it sometime in May. Facebook is under legal pressure to go public this year because of the so-called “500 shareholder rule,” which requires companies to disclose financial information by the end of the first quarter the year after the company tops 500 shareholders.

Information about Facebook's ownership structure and employee compensation packages is hard to come by, since the still-private company discloses very little. But that could all change next week if the company files documents required by the Securities and Exchange Commission to offer stock to the public.

It is clear that Facebook's earliest employees, who were given ownership stakes, and early venture capital investors -- such as Accel Partners, Greylock Partners and Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel -- will see the biggest paydays.

The Journal reported that Accel could see a return of $9 billion on an initial investment of $12.7 million. Several other venture capital firms would see their stakes grow to over $1 billion in value. Thiel's current stake could not be determined.

Zuckerberg, 27, is estimated to own a little over a fifth of the company, according to "The Facebook Effect" author David Kirkpatrick, meaning he could be worth $20 billion. The latest Forbes 400 list estimated Zuckerberg was worth $17.5 billion, making him No. 14 on its list of richest Americans.

The wealth will trickle down to engineers, salespeople and other staffers who later joined the company, since most employees receive salary plus some kind of equity-based compensation, such as restricted stock units or stock options.

Facebook's headcount has swelled from 700 employees in late 2008 to more than 3,000 today. Given its generous use of equity-based compensation in past years, people familiar with Facebook say that even by conservative estimates there are likely to be well over 1,000 people who will become instant millionaires, at least on paper, when the company goes public.

"There will be thousands of millionaires," said a former in-house recruiter at Facebook, who did not want to be identified because of confidentiality agreements.

Would you buy Facebook stock? Vote below and then share on your thoughts on -- where else? -- Facebook.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Am I the only one who loves getting a sneak peek at Super Bowl ads? I think not.

Audi has just released a 60-second commercial it plans to air during the big game in one of the prime commercial blocks: the first break after kick-off.

The ad, a clear takeoff on the "Twilight" film series, shows a couple dozen young, good-looking vampires partying around a campfire, running up trees, strumming guitars and drinking liquid refreshments out of plastic red beer cups.

Here comes our hero cruising up the highway in an Audi S7 with a full cooler of blood tucked beneath the console.

And then, well, what the heck? Watch the ad below.

I'll say one thing:  Audi gets its message across.

Love it? Hate it? Weigh in on our Facebook page.

By Reuters

Stocks fell on Friday on news the U.S. economy grew more slowly than expected in the last quarter of 2011, while the euro held firm on hopes of an imminent deal on Greece's debt that could help avert a disorderly default.

The world's biggest economy grew at an annualized 2.8 percent pace during the last three months of 2011. It was the fastest growth rate in gross domestic product in 1-1/2 years, but fell short of the 3.0 percent predicted by economists, and much of the increase came from inventory building rather than business investment or consumer spending.

For the year, U.S. GDP grew 1.7 percent, weaker than the 3 percent growth in 2010.

The GDP report spurred worries about U.S. economic growth after the Federal Reserve signaled its own doubt on Wednesday, when it delayed the timing for an interest rate hike until at least late 2014.

"Today's GDP numbers, while positive, indicate that the economy is not really doing all that well and (Federal Reserve) Chairman Bernanke's extreme policy may be in fact what's needed," said Michael Sheldon, chief market strategist at RDM Financial in Westport, Connecticut.

European stocks were down 0.9 percent after flirting with five-month highs earlier, while Tokyo's Nikkei closed down 0.09 percent. Emerging market stocks clung to a 0.2 percent gain after touching a new three-month peak earlier.

In Europe, European Union Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said talks with private creditors on restructuring Greek debt are "very close" to closing. Athens needs a deal quickly to avert an unruly default when a major bond redemption comes due in March, an outcome that could wreak havoc across financial markets.

The mark-up that investors charge other indebted European economies' bond issues also fell. Italy's six-month borrowing costs dropped below 2 percent at an auction, the lowest since May, due to demand from domestic banks flush with European Central Bank funds. Spanish 10-year government bond yields also fell to their lowest since November 2010.

"We could see the market going higher if there was a positive outcome as far as the Greek debt talks are concerned," said Keith Bowman, equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown in London. But he cautioned that a deal would not solve the broader issues of fiscal support across the union.

Marcelo Del Pozo / Reuters

People enter a government job centre in Chipiona, on the southern coast of Spain.

There's no doubt that the U.S. unemployment rate of 8.5 percent (as of December) is painful for Americans. But pain can be relative.

Spain reported Friday that its jobless rate jumped to 22.8 percent in the fourth quarter, according to The Associated Press, up from 21.5 percent in the third quarter. That means 5.3 million Spaniards were out of work in the last three months of the year versus 4.9 million in the third quarter.

The Spanish jobless rate is by far the highest in the eurozone, with Ireland a distant second with 14.6 percent unemployed. 

It gets worse for Spain. For young Spaniards ages 16 to 24, almost half, or 48.6 percent, are not working, the BBC reported. 

The government reported Friday that the U.S. economy's growth rate picked up speed in the final three months of 2011, expanding at the fastest rate in 1-1/2 years.

Msnbc.com would like to hear your thoughts on the economy. Do you think it will continue to accelerate in 2012?