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Henri Cartier Bresson Shanghai 1947
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“there has been no gain in employed prime age male workers during the entirety of this century!”
• Funny Facts Friday (David Stockman)
The funny numbers came in a veritable torrent today. For instance, the so-called U-3 unemployment rate dropped to a 17-year low of 4.1% for October. Yet the same BLS household survey which posted the lowest unemployment rate since early 2000 showed that the number of employed Americans actually sank by 484,000 last month. How’s that? Well, easy as pie according to the data mavens at the BLS. It seems that the number of persons not in the labor force soared by 969,000 in October. So, yes, with a smaller numerator and an even smaller denominator they came up with a better – nay, awesome – unemployment rate. Then again, none of the talking heads on bubblevision even mentioned the staggering loss of 484,000 jobs during the month because they ignore the household survey’s job count entirely in favor of the establishment survey number (up 261,000) – even though the former drives the unemployment rate, which they crow about endlessly.
This cherry-picking of the data is quite understandable, however, when you consider what is really buried in the household survey and is completely ignored by the stock peddlers. To wit, not so awesome at all is the fact that during October there was an all-time record of 95.4 million persons not in the labor force and another 6.5 million that were jobless – meaning 102 million Americans (16 and older) don’t have jobs. That compares to 42 million retired workers on social security. Consequently, there are 60 million adult Americans who are housewives, students, disabled, food stamp and welfare recipients, social security dependents, dwellers in mom’s basement or denizens of the illegal drug, gambling or sex trades.
To be sure, we don’t have any special opinion on the merits of these pursuits, but we do have a point of view on the societal and fiscal math. Namely, the diminishing relative ranks of workers and tax mules in American society are going to buckle under the weight of baby boom retirements and soaring welfare and public sector health care costs in the years just ahead. In that context, one of the most striking numbers in today’s report is that 53.0 million prime age men 25 to 54 years old were employed in October, 2017. As is evident in the chart below, that is down by 1.5 million jobholders since the pre-crisis peak in May 2007 and virtually identical to the number in January 2001. Stated differently, there has been no gain in employed prime age male workers during the entirety of this century!
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“..on a monthly basis, there was no wage increase at all..”
• October Payrolls, Average Hourly Earnings Miss Big (ZH)
Well, with virtually everyone expecting a 300K+ payrolls number after last month’s negative hurricane-distorted print, and with whispers of a 400K print floating around, it only made sense that not only would payrolls disppoint, printing at 261K, one standard deviation below the 310K consensus estimate (and that even with a whopping 89,000 waiters and bartenders added) .. but also that the far more important average hourly earnings number, which was expected to rise at a 2.7% rate Y/Y, also missed, printing at 2.4% instead with September revised lower to 2.8%. Worse, on a monthly basis, there was no wage increase at all, printing at 0.0% (technically it was a 1 cent decline), below the 0.2% expected, and the lowest since June 2015.
Average weekly earnings also disappointed, declining by 35 cents to $912.63, the first decline since May. It is also notable that after the September surge, the number of employed Americans per the Household Survey tumbled by 484K in October, to 153.961 million. That said, the real action this time was found in previous months, where September was revised higher from -33.000 to +18,000 while August was revised up from +169,000 to +208,000, for a total two month revision of +90,000. Additionally, the unemployment rate dropped to a new cycle low, declining from 4.2% to 4.1%, below the 4.2% expected, while the underemployment rate declined to 7.9%, the lowest since the start of the century.
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“..the civilian labor force shrunk by whopping 765,000 in one month.”
• Record 95.4 Million Americans Not in Labor Force, 968,000 Exit In 1 Month (ZH)
In what was otherwise a mediocre jobs report, in which the establishment survey reported that a lower than expected 261K jobs were added to the post-Hurricane economy, the biggest surprise was not in the Establishment survey, but the household, where the unemployment rate tumbled once more, sliding to a new cycle low of 4.1%, for all the wrong reasons, because a quick look at the participation rate metrics showed that in October there was a sharp decline, with the labor force part. rate sliding from 63.1% to 62.7%, back to 4 decade lows…… driven by one disturbing metric: the number of people who exited the labor force soared by a near record 968,000 in October – the third highest on record – pushing the total number of people not in the labor force to a record 95.385 million, as the civilian labor force shrunk by whopping 765,000 in one month.
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This took place as the number of employed Americans declined by 484,000, however since the unemployment rate denominator dropped more, it translated into an actual decline in the unemployment rate! So much for economist hopes that potential workers from the fringes are coming back to the labor force. Of course, the implication is even worse: with more slack being created in the form of workers who are leaving, not entering, the labor force, this creates a buffer for wage growth, and suggests that any hope for rapidly rising wages has once again been derailed.
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Not clear what they will be left with. FARA seems hard to prosecute.
• Manafort Money Laundering Charge In Russia Probe May Face Challenges (R.)
When the lawyer for the former campaign manager of President Donald Trump attacked the money laundering charge brought against his client as flimsy, some legal experts say he may have pinpointed a potential weakness in the indictment by U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller. Paul Manafort and his associate Rick Gates both pleaded not guilty on Monday to charges that they failed to disclose they were lobbying for pro-Russia former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich between 2006 and 2015 and laundered tens of millions of dollars by funneling the money through dozens of companies, partnerships and bank accounts.
In a court filing on Thursday, Manafort defense lawyer Kevin Downing said the money laundering count, the most serious facing his client with a 20-year maximum sentence, was based on a “tenuous legal theory” tying it to his failure to register as a foreign agent of the former Ukrainian leader. [..] The language of the filing and defiant statements Downing made outside the courthouse following Manafort’s arraignment on Monday suggest the lawyer is planning an aggressive defense of the charges, the first to be made public from Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The Kremlin has denied meddling and Trump has said there was no collusion. Neither Trump nor his campaign was mentioned in the indictments issued on Monday.
Downing will also be seeking to suppress evidence he said was improperly obtained by search warrant, according to an additional filing on Friday. Manafort’s Virginia home was raided by FBI agents over the summer. The money laundering statute targets financial transactions involving the proceeds of “specified unlawful activity.” According to the Manafort indictment, the unlawful activity was his violation of the U.S. Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA). Though the money laundering statute includes FARA violations, Seattle tax lawyer John Colvin said the charge against Manafort was not as straightforward as most other cases. “It doesn’t fit the normal paradigm” of money-laundering cases involving criminal activity like drug trafficking, Colvin said. “It seems like a stretch to me.”
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“Are there any like me out there who would like to see both parties tossed onto the garbage barge of history?”
Now comes the news from Donna Brazille, on-again-off-again Democrat Party chair, that the primary elections were elaborately rigged by HRC functionaries to buy control of her nomination. Let’s not even go into the bidding for the Christopher Steele “dossier” alleging kinky sexual romps in Moscow by Donald Trump, or the activities in Ukraine of Tony Podesta’s DC lobbying company — that’s Tony, brother of John Podesta, Clinton campaign chief, whose emails remain a truffle cache for the rooting dogs of the DOJ, if they were actually on-the-task. I write this as a still-registered Democrat myself — though I consider myself their enemy now, yet hardly a Trump partisan. Are there any like me out there who would like to see both parties tossed onto the garbage barge of history?
Of course, to say that also means throwing out a cargo of terrible ideas and beliefs, not just two clown cars of personalities. Identity politics, zero interest rate policy, American Exceptionalism, endless debt, nation-building in foreign lands, FASB-157, sanctuary cities, Title IX coercion, racketeering in health care and higher ed, market interventions, ambiguous borders… is just some of the cargo that needs to be dumped overboard with both parties. Watergate begins to look as quaint and simple as a game of Chutes and Ladders compared to RussiaGate. Not only are both parties implicated one way or another in multiple nefarious schemes, plots, and intrigues, but the Department of Justice and its subsidiary, the FBI, look culpable in a range of cover-ups and mis-directions. If the DOJ becomes disabled, how does any of this get resolved?
The whole extravaganza is heading toward a constitutional crisis that might clean out the system like a Death Wish coffee enema. Sentiment may arise for Mr. Mueller to step aside, if President Trump doesn’t make the rash decision to simply fire him. The latter would certainly foment a constitutional crisis that could include an effort to run Trump over with the 25th amendment. In the event, we’ll be in a new kind of civil war.
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New deal.
• How Democrats Can Beat The Republican Tax Cut (Bartlett)
To get back on offense, I think Democrats should stop trying to compete with Republicans on more distributionally fair tax cuts. When you can’t win, don’t play the game. Instead, they should say, if Republicans are willing to increase the deficit by $1.5 trillion, let’s use that money for something the country really needs that will create a vastly greater number of jobs. That is a giant infrastructure program. There is no need to detail the myriad of ways that the money could be spent without coming close to exhausting the available projects. Roads, bridges, schools, hurricane repair projects, sea walls and such to protect against future climate catastrophes, the power grid and many, many more. Civil engineers periodically publish long lists of urgent infrastructure needs.
Not only would a big infrastructure program be capital that will pay off for decades, just as Republican Dwight Eisenhower’s national highway program did, but it will create vastly more jobs than any kind of tax cut, especially the one Republicans are proposing that would largely benefit the wealthy while providing no incentives for job creation or investment. The Congressional Budget Office has long provided estimates to Congress showing that direct spending by government on infrastructure has a much more powerful effect on economic growth than any type of tax cut. A February 2015 report showed that purchases of goods and services by the federal government would raise GDP by as much as $2.50 for every $1 spent. Grants to state and local government for infrastructure could create as much as $2.20 for every $1 spent.
By contrast, according to the same report, a temporary tax cut for the wealthy, such as Republicans propose today, would create at most 60 cents of GDP for every $1 of foregone revenue. A tax cut for the middle class is much better, creating as much as $1.50 of GDP for every $1 of revenue loss. Corporate tax cuts are the worst, creating at most 40 cents of GDP for every $1 of revenue loss. Some may say that these estimates are high, given that we are close to full employment, according to many economists. But the additional stimulus would draw many discouraged workers back into the labor force, especially if it created upward pressure on wages, which workers desperately need. Higher wages will raise consumer spending that will further increase growth.
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This is going spectacularly off the rails. Brussels can no longer insist it’s a domestic Spanish issue. Because Puidgemont is in …. Brussels.
• European Arrest Warrant Issued For Catalan Leader Carles Puigdemont (G.)
A Spanish judge has issued an international arrest warrant for Catalonia’s ousted president a day after she jailed eight members of the region’s separatist government pending possible charges over last week’s declaration of independence. In the latest twist in Spain’s worst political crisis in four decades, a national court judge on Friday issued a European arrest warrant for Carles Puigdemont in response to a request from state prosecutors. Puigdemont flew to Brussels earlier this week with a handful of his deposed ministers after Spanish authorities removed him and his cabinet from office for pushing ahead with the declaration despite repeated warnings that it was illegal. Puigdemont’s Belgian lawyer has already said his client will fight extradition without seeking political asylum.
Puigdemont was summoned to appear at Spain’s national court on Thursday to give evidence relating to possible charges of sedition, rebellion and misuse of public funds, but failed to appear. He has said he would only return to Spain if he were offered guarantees that the judicial process he would face were fair. Late on Friday, Puigdemont told the Belgian public TV channel RTBF that he would put his faith in the Belgian courts. He said: “I will not flee from justice. I will go towards justice, but real justice. I’ve told my lawyers to tell the Belgian justice system that I’m completely available to cooperate. “It’s obvious it’s politicised. The guarantees are not there for a fair, independent trial.”
It was Puigdemont first interview since arriving in Brussels on Monday and it he claimed there was “enormous influence of politics over the judiciary in Spain”. He said: “It’s not normal that we risk 30 years in prison, it’s extremely barbaric, we can not talk about democracy.” Puigdemont said he was ready to stand in the election, adding: “It’s possible to run a campaign from anywhere. We consider ourselves a legitimate government. “There must be a continuity to tell the world what’s going on in Spain … It’s not with a government in jail that the elections will be neutral, independent, normal.”
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Better make it a national emergency right now.
• America’s Opioid Crisis Is About To Get Worse (ZH)
The simple chart below from the United Nation’s Office on Drugs and Crime beautifully illustrates the next leg up in America’s opioid crisis. If you thought today’s situation was bad – think again. Afghanistan, the world’s largest producer of opium just logged a record crop harvest this year doubling last year’s production. Some how – some way, Afghanistan’s opium will find its way into a neighborhood near you. According to VOANEWS, Last year, poppies were cultivated on 201,000 hectares, yielding 4,700 tons of opium, up 46% from 2015. Sources told VOA’s Pashto service more than 10,000 tons of opium were produced this year. Opium then can be refined into heroin. The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime estimated that opium accounted for some 16% of the country’s GDP last year, including more than two-thirds of the entire agricultural sector. In addition to fueling insecurity, violence and insurgency, the drug production is discouraging private and public investment, a UNODC report said.
This is a bad sign for President Trump who opted to call the opioid crisis a ‘public emergency’ rather than a full-blown ‘national emergency’. Highlights from Trump’s opioid crisis speech: In 2016, more than two million Americans had an addiction to prescription or illicit opioids. Since 2000, over 300,000 Americans have died from overdoses involving opioids. Drug overdoses are now the leading cause of injury death in the United States, outnumbering both traffic crashes and gun-related deaths. In 2015, there were 52,404 drug overdose deaths — 33,091 of those deaths, almost two-thirds, involved the use of opioids. The situation has only gotten worse, with drug overdose deaths in 2016 expected to exceed 64,000. This represents a rate of 175 deaths a day.
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What happens when you transfer your food production abroad. Look, Cuba and Russia used it to their advantage.
• ‘No Deal’ Brexit To Add £930 A Year To UK Shopping Bills (G.)
Households face increases of up to £930 in their annual shopping bills if Britain walks away from Brexit talks without a trade deal, according to new research that reveals a disproportionate impact on poorer families and the unemployed. Meat, vegetables, dairy products, clothing and footwear would be subject to the largest consumer price rises under a “no-deal” scenario, according to a study published in the authoritative National Institute Economic Review, adding to inflationary pressures that have already forced the first interest rate rise in a decade this week. Stalled negotiations resume next week in Brussels, but the government is also about to publish a trade bill that would result in Britain being required to apply swingeing new tariffs on European imports if it falls back on World Trade Organisation rules.
Since WTO tariffs are highest for fresh food – reaching 45% for dairy products and 37% for meat – and much of this is currently imported from Europe, the team of economists predict an inflationary surge that could match that already inflicted by the falling pound. This would impact most on those least able to afford it, as poorer households typically spend a much higher proportion of their income on food and other essentials. For the 2m worst-affected households, the study predicts their weekly expenditure will rise by 2-4.7%, equivalent to £400-930 extra a year. “The overall increase in price in the affected goods is estimated to be 2.7% and this translates into an increase in the overall cost of living of 0.8-1.1% for a typical family, with the unemployed and families, those with children and pensioners hit hardest,” conclude the economists from the University of Sussex and Resolution Foundation.
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America takes revenge on Chavez.
• Stalked By Default Fears, Venezuela Calls Creditor Meeting (AFP)
Venezuela on Friday called foreign creditors to a November 13 meeting in Caracas aiming to restructure its estimated $150 billion debt, as credit-rating agencies dealt the crisis-stricken country another blow with double downgrades. Standard & Poor’s cut the nation’s long-term foreign currency rating to “CC” from “CCC-” over growing concerns of the risk of a debt default in the oil-producing country, while fellow agency Fitch cut the long-term debt rating to “C” from “CC.” The increasingly dire warnings followed President Nicolas Maduro’s calls to “investors across the whole world and to holders of Venezuelan debt” to attend a Caracas meeting November 13 “to start a process to refinance and renegotiate the external debt.”
His vice president, Tareck El Aissami, who is leading a commission tasked with the restructuring, said the government is seeking “sovereign commitments” for a debt renegotiation. Flanked by the ministers in charge of the economy, finance and energy, El Aissami confirmed the country had on Friday started to pay out $1.2 billion due to service the debt of state oil company PDVSA. Maduro announced Thursday that Venezuela would begin talks to refinance the debt immediately after that payment was made. El Aissami, one of the Venezuelan officials sanctioned by the United States due to alleged ties to drug trafficking, said the talks with creditors will “establish the groundwork to renegotiate the terms of the foreign debt of the Republic and of PDVSA.”
“We will begin a sovereign renegotiation of our debt and we will continue to comply fully, transparently, as our government has done historically,” he said in a televised statement. He noted that since 2014 Venezuela, which has the largest proven crude oil reserves in the world, has paid nearly $72 billion in principal and interest payments on the debt. Maduro has repeatedly blamed the United States for the country’s woes, saying Washington is trying to strangle Venezuela with sanctions. US sanctions imposed on Venezuela in August ban US trade in any new bonds issued by the Venezuelan government or PDVSA — a needed step in any restructuring. El Aissami denounced the “continued aggression, permanent sabotage, blockade and financial persecution” he said US President Donald Trump has imposed on the people of Venezuela.
But he said the sanctions really hurt bondholders and financial institutions. Much of Venezuela’s debt is held by China and Russia, to be paid off in oil – the resource that underpins the Venezuelan economy. The country has less than $10 billion in foreign currency reserves. Analysts were pessimistic about Venezuela’s chances of successfully restructuring its debt. “Venezuela’s options to keep up with its payments are shrinking rapidly, mainly because any restructuring needs to be matched with clear and credible economic reforms capable of winning the trust and support of bond-holders,” said Diego Moya-Ocampos, an analyst at London-based IHS Markit.
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People will make themselves sick, self harm, just to get off the islands.
• The Greek Island Camp Where Only The Sick Or Pregnant Can Leave (G.)
Eida was two months pregnant when she suffered a miscarriage. A month later, the 18-year-old Syrian refugee still feels angry and despondent. Not just that she lost a child. But that being pregnant was her ticket off the Greek island of Samos – and out of a squalid, barren, barb-wired camp. The young woman is one of around 3,000 refugees in Samos, one of the five Greek “hotspot” islands in the eastern Aegean Sea, designated by the EU to act as a barricade against massive irregular migrant arrivals from Turkey. Since March 2016, when Brussels concluded a controversial agreement with Ankara to curb migrant flows, only vulnerable cases are transferred from the hotspots to the Greek mainland. Eida had hoped to become one of those cases.
The rest are left with two options: languish under deplorable conditions in the camps until their asylum claims are examined, or pay local smuggling networks €1,000 or more to get ferried to the mainland. Anastasia Theodoridou, head of social services at Samos state hospital, says she routinely deals with cases like Eida’s. “Dozens of women come to the hospital desperate to find out they are pregnant. Other refugees are eager for a diagnosis of any serious condition. And if there is nothing wrong with them, they bring their spouses and children. Maybe one of them might have a chance of a diagnosis.” According to internal documents, the Samos hospital has handled 7,857 visits by refugees since the start of the year.
The grotesque paradox of refugees hoping to be ill to get favourable treatment casts a shadow on the EU’s narrative about the success of its response to the refugee crisis.The rosy outlook from Brussels is often based on statistics that show a sharp reduction in irregular daily crossings and deaths in the Aegean. This in turn has resulted in a broad desertion of the tragedy by the international community: journalists have long since gone home, NGOs are packing up, volunteers are few and far between and official funding has been reduced. But despite substantial EU support to Athens – €430m has been contracted according to the European commission – conditions at the Greek hotspots remain appalling. With the focus now shifting to refugees crossing the sea from Libya, Tunisia or Algeria, the situation here is still no less dramatic than a year ago. It is still a massive crisis, albeit a somewhat forgotten one.
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Home › Forums › Debt Rattle November 4 2017