U.S. equities had every chance to sell off in a major way today. All week we received data suggesting that the recovery is in serious jeopardy.
Yet the markets managed to pare more than 65% of its losses despite a horrible NFP #
DOW off 41
NASDAQ off 21
S&P off 6.8
WTI down $0.24
Brent down $1.94
Gold up $26
[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWLIgjB9gGw 450 300]
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This documentary puts together everything I have been saying since i was literally 11 years old.
Friends of mine say why complain, why bitch, and that what i say is too big to tackle too depressing to even think about. They are no longer my friends as i have no time for those who have no humanity.
When i bot my home a bumper sticker on the water heater said “If Nothing Changes, Then Nothing Changes”…while that is true there also comes a time where dislocation comes so slowly or too quick to notice until you are in such excruciating pain you wonder how you will ever get back to normal.
Thankfully, there is hope and wisdom that will get us back to normal. The question is will you participate or be an obstacle ?
Cheers on your weekend!
[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njSV5LtVmR4 450 300] [youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjWD0JU92lw 450 300] [youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDRPtg0kmJU 450 300] Comments »Link for iPhone users: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAfO4fcP8UY
[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpAqiGSp29c 450 300]“Thyroid abnormalities have shown up in American babies living along the West Coast, which researchers say was caused by radiation that leaked from Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in 2011.
Babies born in Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington between one week and 16 weeks after the nuclear meltdown began in March 2011 were found to be 28% more likely to suffer from congenital hypothyroidism (CH) than children born in those states during the same period one year earlier.
The results come from a new study (pdf) conducted by researchers at the Radiation and Public Health Project. The findings were published by the Open Journal of Pediatrics.
According to researchers, “Fukushima fallout appeared to affect all areas of the US, and was especially large in some, mostly in the western part of the nation.”
CH occurs as a result of radioactive iodine building up in thyroids. The condition can cause stunted growth, lowered intelligence, deafness, and neurological abnormalities….”
Comments »“The oil and gas extraction industry lost 600 payrolls in March, according to the BLS report out this morning.
That ends a 27-straight month period without job losses for the sector…”
Full article
“…..”This shows the depth of the recent employment recession – worse than any other post-war recession – and the relatively slow recovery due to the lingering effects of the housing bust and financial crisis,” writes Bill McBride of Calculated Risk.”
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-scariest-jobs-chart-ever-2013-4#ixzz2PasNWKos
Comments »Prior 236k, Market Expects 192k, Actual 88k
Unemployment rate: 7.6%
No change in average hourly earnings…..
What does it day about our society when we trade stocks that go higher by putting debtors in prison? Certainly not all of these people are cheaters of not paying their debts…..fun times indeud.
“(MoneyWatch) Thousands of Americans are sent to jail not for committing a crime, but because they can’t afford to pay for traffic tickets, medical bills and court fees.
If that sounds like a debtors’ prison, a legal relic which was abolished in this country in the 1830s, that’s because it is. And courts and judges in states across the land are violating the Constitution by incarcerating people for being unable to pay such debts.
Ask Jack Dawley, 55, an unemployed man in Ohio who between 2007 and 2012 spent a total of 16 days in jail in a Huron County lock-up for failing to pay roughly $1,500 in legal fines he’d incurred in the 1990s. The fines stemmed from Dawley’s convictions for driving under the influence and other offenses. After his release from a Wisconsin correctional facility, Dawley, who admits he had struggled with drugs and alcohol, got clean. But if he put his substance problems behind him, Dawley’s couldn’t outrun his debts.
Struggling to find a job and dealing with the effects of a back injury, he fell behind on repayments to the municipal court in Norwalk, Ohio. He was arrested six years ago and sent to jail for not paying his original court fines. Although Dawley was put on a monthly payment plan, during his latest stint behind bars in 2012 the court ordered him to pay off his entire remaining debt.
” I called my brother, and they told him I have to pay off the whole fine in order for me to get out,” he said. “That was $900. So I sat my whole 10 days [in jail.]”
Such stories are by no means unusual. Rather, they reflect a justice system that in effect criminalizes poverty. “It’s a growing problem nationally, particularly because of the economic crisis,” said Inimai Chettiar, director of the justice program at New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice.
Roughly a third of U.S. states today jail people for not paying off their debts, from court-related fines and fees to credit card and car loans, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Such practices contravene a 1983 United States Supreme Court ruling that they violate the Constitutions’s Equal Protection Clause….”
Comments »“President Barack Obama’s proposed budget will call for reductions in in the growth of Social Security and other benefit programs by including a proposal to lower cost-of-living adjustments to government social safety net spending, a senior administration official says.
The proposal attempts to strike a compromise with congressional Republicans on the Fiscal 2014 budget by combining the president’s demand for higher taxes with GOP insistence on reductions in entitlement programs.
The official, who spoke on a condition of anonymity to describe a budget that has yet to be released, said Obama would reduce the federal government deficit by $1.8 trillion over 10 years.
[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xwh8kWuire8 450 300] Comments »“For a few days, the rest of the world looked on awaiting the riots and social unrest in Cyprus that we have become accustomed to from their fellow unter-sufferers Greece and Spain; but it never came. However, as Reuters reports, the public shock (and numbness) over the tough terms of the so-called bailout is now turning to anger as million of Euros remain locked inside the country’s banks. The people are “disappointed and angry,” that the politicians are out of touch, and, “the big guys, who had the information, managed to take their money abroad.” No one has answers for them, “I wrote to the central bank and they came back saying that it was not their competence, so whose competence is it?” as frustration boils over, “absolutely nothing adds up.” But perhaps the saddest truth is that the Cypriots are resigned to years of hardship, “I am going to find myself on the street with no future, only debts. But we will fight to the end. We have nothing left to lose.” It seems when a people has nothing to lose that anything is possible…
Via Reuters….”
Comments »“Ordinarily in the first post we would recap any of the key overnight events, but in this case there was just one event of note ahead of today’s non-farm payroll seasonally adjusted “noise”: the halting of the Japanese Government Bond complex due to excessive volatility. Now, this is not some zero-liquidity penny stock or an algo fat binary finger: at last check there is one quadrillion yen in Japanese debt, which makes it the second biggest sovereign bond market in the world. Yet one glimpse at what transpired in overnight trading and one can see just why the Japanese regulators decided it is time to close all bond trading. The reason: the JGB’s insane decision to literally reflate or bust, and with it the total loss of all signalling to various asset classes, because while the country is targeting 2% inflation, its bond curve is indicating the most epic deflation in history. The good news: the bond market reopened… eventually; the bad news: who knows if it will, the next time there is a 100% swing from low to high in the 10Y JGB bond yield in the span of hours. Which brings us to the point of this post, summarized best by Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid who overnight said it best: “we are now flying blind“… The central banks are now flying a plane that has lost all hydraulics and their only option is to add ever more power to the engines to pretend they are still in control.
From DB’s Jim Reid…”
Comments »“…Futures were having a nice morning till around 5:45AM, when almost $1.4B printed in DAX and ESTOXX futures – knocking the DAX off almost 2%, and taking US futures down 50bp. No headlines associated, but no recovery when Germany’s Factory Orders printed better (despite bearish chatter). We “Hear” that a heavy buyer of DAX futures between 7800 and 7850 on Monday got stopped out at 7800, and lighter single stock volumes could not support the weight. There was nothing in Credit or FX to correspond to the move…”
Comments »Prior 236k, Market Expects 192k, Unemployment rate is 7.7%, Market Expects 7.7%
“What a difference a week makes. Since Monday, forecasts for the March jobs report have dimmed, based on weak economic readings that emerged in the past few days.
The March report, which the Labor Departmentwill issue early Friday, has its work cut out for it, coming on the heels of February’s relatively strong performance.
“We’ve seen a very handsome rebound,” in February, said Eric Lascelles, chief economist for RBC Global Asset Management. “But we might be in for a bit of a pause this month….because recent indicators have soured.”
In the second month of 2013, employers added a net 236,000 jobs and the unemployment rate fell to 7.7% from 7.9%. February’s reading was laced with encouraging signals: temporary hiring climbed and other gains were broad-based, not concentrated in stalwart sectors such as health care and education. There also were some red flags — namely, January’s stark revision down to 119,000 jobs from 157,000. But all told, the snapshot was seen by many as a testament to consumer and business resilience amid headwinds including the budget standoff in Washington. That had many economists predicting 200,000 new jobs for the March report.
Expectations were further stirred by recent strong reports on housing and durable-goods orders. Consumer confidence — hammered by the end of the payroll-tax holiday and a February surge in gas prices — began to bounce back toward the end of March. Initial jobless claims continued their steady decline, with the four-week moving average falling mid-month to roughly 341,000.
But the past week ushered in a raft of less-than-inspiring numbers. The Institute for Supply Management’s Manufacturing and Non-Manufacturing Indexes both reflected growth slowing. On Wednesday, ADP’s estimate for 158,000 new jobs in March in the private sector caught many by surprise. And on Thursday, initial jobless claims climbed back to a four-week moving average around 354,000, in effect wiping out the improvement notched earlier in the month.
Those factors, as well as a low employment reading in the ISM’s nonmanufacturing report, have RBC’s Mr. Lascelles expecting a gain of 175,000 jobs tomorrow. The initial jobless claims likely were affected by the calendar — Spring Break and an early Easter — he said, so although the March jobs figure may not be a “magic 200,000-plus,” it should be “a solidly triple-digit hit.”
Credit Suisse analysts on Wednesday lowered their forecast for net jobs to 160,000 from 200,000, citing ADP and the employment sub-index in the ISM non-manufacturing report….”
Comments »“The “fear trade” is alive and well.
Investors rediscovered the appeal of haven Treasury bonds on Thursday, amid a flurry of worrying news ranging from North Korea to the domestic job market.
The mood change sent Treasury prices rallying to the highest point this year. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, which moves inversely to prices, fell to its lowest point this year and equal to its closing level at the end of 2012.
The moves left buyers of the 10-year Treasury note in the black for the year, a notable swing after the debt spent the entire first quarter in negative territory.
The rally in U.S. government debt began early Thursday after the Bank of Japan8301.JA -3.16% launched an aggressive monetary-easing policy. Buyers poured more heavily into the market after U.S. jobless claims jumped unexpectedly to the highest level in four months, a sign of softness in the labor market…..”
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“Hewlett-Packard Chairman Ray Lane, who is under fire from shareholders for his role in the botched, costly acquisition of British software firm Autonomy, has stepped down, the company said on Thursday.”
Comments »“The U.S. government paid almost $80 million in unemployment benefits during the worst of the economic downturn to households that made more than $1 million, including a record $29.9 million in 2010, tax records show.
Almost 3,200 households — about 20 percent of them from New York — that reported adjusted gross income of more than $1 million received jobless-insurance payments averaging $12,600 in 2010, the latest year for which figures are available, according to IRS data compiled by Bloomberg. Those payments outpaced the total incomes for about 25 million U.S. households.
The $80 million represents less than 0.01 percent of this year’s $845 billion projected deficit. Yet the unemployment aid to millionaire households underscores the lack of means-testing in some federal aid programs as the Labor Department reports new jobless figures today. The aid also is a reminder of the difficulty of reining in spending.
“So many people are taking advantage of government support that they probably feel like, why shouldn’t they take advantage of it, too?” said George Walper Jr., president of the Spectrem Group, a Chicago-based market-research and consulting firm that tracks the number of households worth more than $1 million.
Lawmakers have repeatedly tried to end or limit benefits to high-income households. A January report by the Congressional Research Service found at least five such efforts.
The House of Representatives passed legislation in December 2011 as part of a jobs bill that would have taxed unemployment benefits at 100 percent for single filers with adjusted gross incomes exceeding $1 million or married filers reporting $2 million in income. The provision wasn’t included in the bill signed by President Barack Obama.
“Crude in New York traded near a two- week low, headed for its biggest weekly drop since September as more talks on Iran’s nuclear program get underway.
West Texas Intermediate futures were little changed, poised for a 4.2 percent loss from the March 28 close, the most since the week ended Sept. 21. World powers and Iran started two-day talks in Kazakhstan and U.S. March payroll data will be released later today. Crude stockpiles in the U.S., the world’s largest crude consumer, gained more than forecast last week, to a 22- year high. Declines in London’s Brent crude may be “overdone,” according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
“The market has been a bit negative about payroll figures coming later today, and the surprise could be more on the upside,” said Thina Saltvedt, an analyst at Nordea Bank AG in Oslo.
WTI for May delivery was at $93.12 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange, down 14 cents, at 10:25 a.m. London time. It fell 1.3 percent to $93.26 yesterday, the lowest settlement since March 21.
Brent for May settlement on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange was at $106.22 a barrel, down 12 cents. It declined 0.7 percent to $106.34 yesterday, the lowest close since Nov. 2. The futures have fallen 11 percent from this year’s intraday peak of $119.17 on Feb. 8.
The European benchmark grade was at a $13.10 premium to WTI, versus $13.08 yesterday. The spread shrank to $12.66 on April 3, the narrowest since July. The volume of WTI contracts traded was 40 percent below the 100-day average while Brent was 15 percent above.
Brent may recover from the recent sell-off as global inventories will remain low and economic growth picks up in the second half of the year, Goldman Sachs said in a report yesterday. The bank maintained its second-quarter price projection at $110 a barrel….”
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