Archive - Sep 4, 2015

Since the start of the Second Great Depression, the US economy has lost 1.4 million manufacturing workers, but has more than made up for this with the addition ff 1.5 million waiters and bartenders.

On the heels of the unprecedented proximity of 5 Chinese naval ships in the Bering Sea, U.S. military satellites have been tracking a Russian spy ship - capable of cutting undersea communications cables and other sensors - since it was spotted in the north Atlantic last month off the coast of Kings Bay, Ga., home to the U.S. Navy’s East Coast ballistic missile submarine fleet. As FOX News reports, The Pentagon says the ship is transiting toward its next destination - Cuba.

FANG - Forget About New Gains? It appears another one of the legs of the new investing meme has broken. NFLX is now down 25% from its record highs in August and has entirely roundtripped from the post-stock-split exuberance...

While conspiracy theories of Trump's run as a disruptive influence in the Republican ranks to 'help' Hillary seems to be floundering following his pledge and jibes yesterday, it appears the two have more in common than anyone could have believed. It turns out Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are distant cousins - sharing royal blood that runs deep in their family lines. No wonder The Oligarchy is so comfortable ruling over us serfs.

While we have exposed the ugly under-belly of today's jobs data, mainstream media is spinning it as a 'Goldilocks' report with enough hits-and-misses for every hawk or dove. The market's initial reaction signals rising expectations of a September rate hike but, as Goldman's Jan Hatzius explains, they continue to expect the FOMC to keep policy rates unchanged at the September 16-17 meeting.

Copper prices are in free-fall this morning, slammed lower by the "good-enough" jobs data. But we suspect the real reason lies elsewhere...

According to the BLS, the main reason why the unemployment rate tumbled to the lowest since April 2008 is because another 261,000 Americans dropped out of the labor force, as a result pushing the total number of US potential workers who are not in the labor force, to a record 94 million, an increase of 1.8 million in the past year, and a whopping 14.9 million since the start of the second great depression in December 2007.

With the refugee crisis in Europe reaching epidemic levels and European leaders impotent, it appears an Egyptian Billionaire has a solution. As Al-Arabiya reports, Naguib Sawiris has offered to buy an island off Greece or Italy and develop it to help hundreds of thousands of people fleeing from Syria and other conflicts.

If wage growth for supervisory workers was indicative of the overall work force, the Fed could indeed claim mission accomplished and hike not 0.25% but 2.5%. There is a problem: supervisory workers only make up 17.5% of the US work force. As such, their wage gains are anything but indicative of the vast 140 or so million US workers. What about the wages for the remaining 82.5% of US workers: the non-supervisory one. Here is the answer...

"There is a general understanding that joint efforts in the fight against terrorism should go hand by hand with the political process in Syria. Assad agrees to this and has also agreed to early parliamentary elections and to include healthy opposition." 

Update - Equity market weakness is accelerating...

September rate hike probability jumped up to 34% (and December 62%) following the 'headline' positive payrolls print. The market is reacting very hawkishly to the data with USD surging, bonds and stocks selling off and commodities leaking lower.

The "most important and anticipated payrolls number ever", or at least since the last payroll number, is out and it is a doozy at only 173K, it is a huge miss to the 217K expected (and almost in line with LaVorgna's forecast). This was the worst monthly payrolls number since Marhc, and the second lowest number in 19 months. However, the curious twist is that the July and June NFPs were both revised higher to 245K, making the net revision up  The unemployment rate dropped to just 5.1%, below the 5.2% expected, and well below July's 5.3%, further boosting the Fed's case that labor slack is evaporating.

With just 20 minutes to go until the latest most important jobs report ever in the history of man, Richmond Fed Chief Lacker just explained why "the case for raising rates is still strong"...

LACKER: BOTH MANDATE CONDITIONS 'APPEAR TO HAVE BEEN MET', EXCEPTIONALLY LOW RATES NO LONGER WARRANTED BY JOB MKT
LACKER: AUG. JOBS REPORT UNLIKELY TO `MATERIALLY ALTER' PICTURE

But perhaps most crucially, Lacker explains "recent financial market volatility is unlikely to affect economic fundamentals in the United States and thus has limited implications for monetary policy," removing the one last leg for permabulls to rely on (that is if you velieve The Fed is not Dow-Data-Dependent).

Three words - retest the lows!

As WSJ reports, "Chinese navy ships off the coast of Alaska in recent days weren’t just operating in the area for the first time: They also came within 12 nautical miles of the U.S. coast, making a rare foray into U.S. territorial waters, according to the Pentagon."