Markets are higher this morning after a turn-around in Asian markets and the strong jobs report.
Jobs report data dump
- Nonfarm payrolls +292k vs 200k expected
- Unemployment rate 5% in line
- Average hourly earnings flat vs. 0.2% expected
- Labor Force participation rate 62.6% vs. 62.5% expected
Generally a strong report – only disappointment is lack of wage growth. The labor market continues to improve, and if this trend continues, we are probably going to see another rate hike at the March FOMC meeting.
Builder KB Home reported a big miss yesterday, which sent the stock down 15%. Revenues and EPS both were shy of expectations. The slowdown in the oil patch is moving buyers down the price curve in Texas. Margins remain under pressure due to lack of available land and increasing labor costs.
We may have a new most valuable publicly-traded company. Saudi Aramco (the state-owned oil company) is thinking about an IPO, which could value the company over a trillion dollars. With oil revenues falling, the Saudi government is looking at different ways to balance the budget.
Filed under: Morning Report |
Frist? Yes, Frist!
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Rats!
EDIT: And I can’t even get my cute rat gif to load. Double rats!
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I just paste the link. What’s the link to the cute rat gif?
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http://giphy.com/gifs/LNF93cQVnbFCM
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Thank you!
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We need a catchy name for this like the Wageless Recovery. Salaries are notoriously sticky but there have been a lot of systemic changes which have had downward pressure. My anecdotal case study is a former fed contract worker who got laid off in 2007 and has been working the past several years as a Starbucks barista at subsistence wages but he keeps holding on to the dream of getting an office job again some day.
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Curious how much immigration has contributed to the flatness of wages.
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Probably quite a bit, but I’m not sure how to make that determination. Probably more in the manual labor type jobs, but probably in tech and engineering, too. Less so in corporate management type gigs, I would guess.
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IMO, technology is probably the bigger driver.. Customer service jobs (low skill) are being replaced by technology. The Millennial generation wants to interact with their phone or tablet, not an actual person…
I even see it at our business… Younger workers almost have an aversion to using the phone..
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Robots are Coming!
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there’s a reason that i have EMT training. and could become a paramedic in about a year. less if i was laid off and could train full time.
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@yellojkt: “We need a catchy name for this like the Wageless Recovery.”
The “oversupply of labor” recovery? Generally, wages only go up when the labor market tightens, so presumably that is not happening.
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Remember all the whining about how Republicans are preventing the government from “studying” the causes of gun violence by banning the CDC from researching it as a disease?
http://www.vox.com/2016/1/7/10729338/academics-study-government-officials
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Heh. Not to mention, why should the Center for Disease Control be studying gun violence as a disease? Are they studying car crashes as a disease? Fatal injuries incurred from falling in the home as a disease?
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The CDC does monitor home safety as a health issue.
http://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecreationalsafety/
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Here are the stats on fatal injuries from falls in the home:
http://www.cdc.gov/HomeandRecreationalSafety/Falls/adultfalls.html
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& this too:
“CDC Helps Prevent Global Violence
Violence causes more than 1.6 million deaths worldwide every year.1 More than 90% of these occur in low- and middle-income countries.1 Violence is one of the leading causes of death in all parts of the world for persons ages 15 to 44.1 But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is working to change that. CDC is committed to building a world free of violence.”
http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/globalviolence/index.html
None of which are disease. Every dollar spent on viewing home safety or global violence as a health issue is one that’s not spent on actual diseases.
It’s all BS. And why any whining on not “fully funding” the CDC allows diseases to linger fails to convince.
Edit: Also here’s the gun death stats. They are collected already.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm
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CDC is the epidemiological research center. NIH is the health research institute. That’s why studies about violence, home safety, and other statistical events fall under the CDC’s purview.
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So studying gun violence would make sense in that context, although, to be perfectly honest, it seems like an increasing broad mission for the Centers for Disease Control which, in certain times, would likely be completely preoccupied with actual diseases. Although I suppose you’re more likely to catch a disease if you are shot, so there is that.
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@Michigoose: “CDC is the epidemiological research center. NIH is the health research institute. That’s why studies about violence, home safety, and other statistical events fall under the CDC’s purview.”
It would seem like the NIH is better named for general health issues, while the CDC would be more about controlling disease. But I know how government works when it comes to titles. And moving around responsibilities.
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I am sure there is some regulatory play going on here…
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Quite a catch.
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Eh. We should still assume the accuser is telling the truth and the accused is guilty. Because justice.
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Congrats, NoVA! Go, Stillers!
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Mark:
On the back of our recent conversation regarding local vs federal power, you may be interested in this article from 6 months ago in NR.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/420896/massive-government-overreach-obamas-affh-rule-out-stanley-kurtz
In effect, AFFH gives the federal government a lever to re-engineer nearly every American neighborhood — imposing a preferred racial and ethnic composition, densifying housing, transportation, and business development in suburb and city alike, and weakening or casting aside the authority of local governments over core responsibilities, from zoning to transportation to education. Not only the policy but the political implications are immense — at the presidential, congressional, state, and local levels.
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Man, I can’t wait to have people who don’t live in my city or neighborhood, who may have never been and may never come to my state, engineering where I live from their ivory towers. That sure to turn out great.
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Kurtz is certainly alarmed by AFFH, and I will try to find time to read it through. If it is half as bad as Kurtz thinks, I will join in the campaign that I am sure suburban municipalities will wage against its final adoption.
Have you read the actual proposed reg? Does it pit city against suburb? If if does, that will push the voting demographic of the suburbs further to the Rs. In TX, big cities are mainly D, but not by outlandish margins, suburbs are mainly R, but not by outlandish margins, and the Big Empty, including the small cities that serve as county seats (the Tylers, Amarillos, Abilenes, Midlands, San Angelos, Texarkanas, Lufkins, etc.) are 80%+ R. If AFFH is what Kurtz thinks, the suburbs will be driven to rural R margins.
I also would not be surprised if it had that effect in similarly urban-rural states, like PA, where the middle of the state has always been referred to as “Pennsyltucky” in Philly and Pittsburgh.
On another level, I oppose using race as a code for poverty. Most poor people in America are actually white, and while a much higher % of blacks than whites have not escaped poverty, I believe that most black families in America have escaped poverty.
I may not read the proposed reg out of sheer preference for playing with my granddaughters, but I may. If I do, or you do, let’s share.
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ha. bengals gotta bungle.
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nova:
ha. bengals gotta bungle.
What a way to blow a game. Lack of discipline.
Jones is claiming that Brown was faking the injury. Says Brown winked at them when he left the field. It looked pretty real to me.
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Different sport but Bill Lambeer could fake an injury that lasted 5 plays. You’d think he’d blown his Achilles’ tendon.
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I was not a fan of Bill Lambeer.
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Good piece on Uber & the New York Taxi industry. This was funny:
& zero sympathy from me:
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Good read on Westchester County from the guy who brought the suit… He claims that HUD and Westchester are basically blowing off the consent decree and he is livid…
Click to access Cheating_On_Every_Level.pdf
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Bummer about David Bowie………….he was always one of our family favorites. Everyone liked him, our kids grew up with his music, and I can’t even remember how many times we watched “Labyrinth” with the girls. I didn’t even know he had cancer…..:(
And GO BAMA!!!!
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lms:
And GO BAMA!!!
What?!? Go TIGERS!!!!
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What a game, I think if Clemson had recovered the onsides they would have scored.
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Yup. Credit Saban for the victory. The onside kick call was a great call.
Clemson special teams let them down. The onside kick, the kickoff return for a TD, the deflected FG at the end of the first half. That’s 17 points right there.
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I rather enjoyed the game……LOL
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lms:
I rather enjoyed the game……LOL
It was a great game to watch, just the wrong result. Saban deserved it, though. Clemson got out-coached in the second half. Several big plays were big not just because of execution, but because of their design, most notably the onside kick but also the first of the 2 long TD passes that the Alabama tight end caught. Overall I think Swinney did a good job, but Saban was better.
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Conventional wisdom on Trump is shifting. Now the media is starting to think he could win:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/01/11/donald-trump-is-getting-much-better-as-a-candidate/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dont-underestimate-trumps-ability-to-harness-a-wave-of-voter-disgust/2016/01/11/9ba4e70e-b898-11e5-829c-26ffb874a18d_story.html
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Worth a note for what didn’t happen:
“Supreme Court Denies Appeal on Student-Loan Erasure
Court won’t consider appeal by unemployed Wisconsin man who owes more than $260,000 in student-loan debt
By Brent Kendall and Josh Mitchell
Updated Jan. 11, 2016 4:23 p.m. ET”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/supreme-court-denies-appeal-on-student-loan-erasure-1452527286
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Wonder if he graduated and what the major was.
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McWing:
Wonder if he graduated and what the major was.
The article says the debts are from both business school and law school. He apparently has failed to pass the bar exam twice. He is also, notably, 57 years old.
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Hear, Hear!
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/429629/state-of-the-union-address-obama-ted-cruz-republicanism
President Barack Obama has promised to make an unconventional State of the Union speech tonight, and it is a safe bet to assume that by “unconventional State of the Union” he means “conventional campaign speech,” heavy with his trademark alloy of intellectual shallowness and risibly inflated self-regard. In 2008 it was “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” but we just can’t wait for them to leave.
Here’s a better idea for an unconventional State of the Union address: Don’t have one.
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Wasn’t that a suggestion a couple of years ago, as well?
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Mich:
Wasn’t that a suggestion a couple of years ago, as well?
I remember that at one point jnc put forward the suggestion that Congress should not even invite O to deliver the address in a joint session. I am all for that, too. There is literally no reason on earth that members of either party should have to attend and sit quietly through a partisan campaign speech/pep rally, which is all these SOTU addresses have been for decades now.
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It’s racist not to invite him.
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The first POTUS not to receive an invitation will be an Anglo hetero-male, not disadvantaged by minority, or age, or any other suspect category.
Thus ensuring Cruz, Rubio, HRC, Sanders, or Fiorina would get multiple shots at boring us.
A good reason to elect Christie?
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We need to go back to where the State of the Union is a written document delivered to congress, for them to peruse at their leisure. And it should be more data than hype and branding.
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KW:
We need to go back to where the State of the Union is a written document delivered to congress, for them to peruse at their leisure.
I’d love that. A president with a proper sense of his place in our constitutional order would do that all on his own. Alas, I am not sure such a president exists anymore. I subscribe fully to the notion that nowadays the mere aspiration to be president means you shouldn’t be.
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We need a president like Thomas Jefferson, who saw the presidency as something akin to jury duty. You came, did your public service as president because you had to and it was your duty, then ran back to your farm in Virginia just as soon as you could.
Jefferson refused to campaign for the presidency. One of his terms for agreeing to stand for president was that he would not have to make public appearances or speak on his own behalf to solicit votes. Man, if only that were possible today. 😉
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And it should be more data than hype and branding.
Like the annual CEO’s report to the stockholders?
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I doubt anyone but the obama slappies will be watching anyway..
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I usually just read the transcript the next day if I think there’s anything worth reviewing based on the news stories. Much faster and you skip the theatrical bullshit.
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I like watching them with the sound off!!
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Transcript:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/01/12/what-obama-said-in-his-state-of-the-union-address-and-what-it-meant/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_analysis%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
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