Morning Report: strong jobs number 8/1/18

Posted on August 1, 2018 by Brent Nyitray

Vital Statistics:

Last Change
S&P futures 2818 1.75
Eurostoxx index 389.71 -1.9
Oil (WTI) 67.7 -1.06
10 Year Government Bond Yield 2.99%
30 Year fixed rate mortgage 4.62%

Stocks are higher this morning after good earnings from Apple. Bonds and MBS are down.

Japanese government bonds got shellacked overnight, with yields rising 8 basis points, which is causing reverberations throughout global bond markets. 8 basis points is a lot in one day regardless, but when rates were only 5 bps to begin with, it is quite the move.

Donald Trump threatened more tariffs with China. We seem to be going back and forth between detente and escalation.

The FOMC announcement is scheduled to be released at 2:00 pm EST. No changes in rates are expected, however the action will be in the statement and the interpretations for a December hike. While Trump’s criticism of the Fed’s rate hikes was unfortunate, things have been testier between the Central Bank and the Executive branch in the past. LBJ shoved William (take away the punch bowl just as the party is getting going) McChesney up against the wall in the Oval Office.

Mortgage Applications fell 2.6% last week as purchases fell 3% and refis fell 2%. We saw a 7 basis point increase in conforming rates to 4.84%. The government share of mortgages increased.

The private sector added 219,000 jobs in July, according to the latest ADP report. The Street is looking for 190,000 in Friday’s report, but as always, the bond market will be looking more at average hourly earnings than the headline payroll number. Construction added 17,000 jobs, while business services added 47,000 and healthcare added 49,000.

Manufacturing decelerated slightly in July, but continued to its torrid pace. As expected, much of the talk is about steel tariffs and when those costs will get passed on to consumers. Labor is becoming a bottleneck as well – it is causing capacity constraints.

Construction spending fell 1.1% in June (which missed estimates) and is up 6.5% on a YOY basis. Resi construction was down on a MOM basis, but increased 8.7% on an annual basis.

Filed under: Economy, Morning Report |

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44 Responses

  2. jnc4p, on August 1, 2018 at 12:04 pm said:

    Apparently Manafort is on trial for having money and spending it.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2018/08/01/paul-manafort-trial-day-two/

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    • markinaustin, on August 1, 2018 at 2:36 pm said:

      The prosecutors have quickly moved closer to the nub – which is tax evasion. This afternoon they have put on two clothiers who sold M. over $1.3M in suits in four years ALL PAID BY WIRE TRANSFER FROM FOREIGN ACCOUNTS.

      I suspect they will be able to tie those foreign accounts to M’s control and the cash into them as Ukranian and none of it as reported income.

      The case is about money laundering and tax evasion and truly has nothing to do with DJT – who tweats like a teenage girl that it has nothing to do with him, because no one else says it has anything to do with him, especially not the prosecutors. Then he also tweats that M is being treated unfairly – I guess because $15M+ of alleged tax evasion is no big deal in DJT’s mindlessness.

      M’s defense is set on blaming Gates for the non-reporting of the income, BTW. Interesting idea. Prosecutors are showing the benefits of the slush fund went to M which anticipates the defense argument of “wasn’t me, daddy, he did it.”

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      • jnc4p, on August 1, 2018 at 2:53 pm said:

        The prosecutors seem to have straightened up and cut the bullshit after the third or fourth instruction from the judge to do so.

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      • ScottC, on August 1, 2018 at 8:22 pm said:

        Mark:

        The case is about money laundering and tax evasion and truly has nothing to do with DJT – who tweats like a teenage girl that it has nothing to do with him, because no one else says it has anything to do with him, especially not the prosecutors.

        I was traveling most of today, but I did spend an hour in a restaurant with CNN on the TV at about 2pm. Quite literally for the entire hour I was there, CNN covered nothing except the Manafort issue, and I presume that their coverage of the issue was not limited to the single hour that I happened to be watching. If it wasn’t for his connection to Trump, most people would never have even heard of Manafort, much less would they care at all about him getting charged with money laundering. So I am wondering, if no one is trying to suggest that the Manafort charges have anything to do with Trump, why do you suppose CNN (among others) are devoting such a huge amount of time to them?

        Then he also tweats that M is being treated unfairly…

        If Mueller hadn’t been appointed as a special prosecutor to investigate Donald Trump’s campaign, what do you think the odds are that these charges would exist right now?

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        • markinaustin, on August 2, 2018 at 10:06 am said:

          George, I am going to send you the ED VA indictment by email as it is nothing like what Napolitano suggested.

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        • Let the mutherfuker burn!, on August 2, 2018 at 10:49 am said:

          If I understood Napalitano correctly, Rosenstein opted to not pursue charges in the late aughts.

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        • markinaustin, on August 3, 2018 at 10:32 am said:

          Napolitano was speaking as if those were the same charges that are relevant today. He suggested that tax charges had been dropped to avoid the defense calling Rosenstein. All of that is irrelevant nonsense. There are tax charges of two different kinds and they concentrate on years after 2010.

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        • Let the mutherfuker burn!, on August 3, 2018 at 10:59 am said:

          Ok, I appreciate the information.

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        • markinaustin, on August 2, 2018 at 9:10 am said:

          Scott,

          1) I think Manafort would have got away with a massive tax evasion if he had not come under scrutiny as an unregistered foreign lobbyist. I do not know that he was not under scrutiny for that, independently, but the only way he gets caught is with a thorough and massive investigation, which Mueller was able to provide. Certainly IRS on its own could not have done this.

          2] CNN hopes Manafort will lead to DJT. I have written here that I think there is a real likelihood that Manafort is the biggest fish in the net due to his ties, and his great wash of phony loans from overseas, etc. Recall that this is an investigation into Russian influence on the election and anything criminal that is found during that investigation.

          3] I am not at all sure that Manafort is the last American fish – could be that Junior and son-in-law get pulled in for being so eager to accept foreign help in an election in violation of election laws, but I doubt they had profit/debt motives anything like Manafort’s. What we know about them seems like wrist slap stuff compared with Manafort, whose criminality seems to me to be common and not electoral, but very Big Time.

          4] I do see the outlines of a story that we may never know about how it was Manafort who volunteered to lead the DJT Campaign in order to serve HIS foreign paymasters – without DJT having had him vetted. A story in which Manafort is the sole operative behind changing the R platform plank about Ukraine and promising his creditors more of the same.

          5] Neither DJT nor “Russian interference” will be part of this trial.

          6] Assuming a conviction, his next trial might tie him to Russian interests in the Ukraine while he was running the campaign. But will there be anything other than the raw facts that was an undeclared agent of a foreign power and campaign manager at the same time? Will the witness tampering part of that case provide more evidence of quid pro quo? Does the prosecution team in that case have witnesses to Manafort’s admitted motives for messing with the Ukraine plank? Do they have money trails at the time he was campaign chair? IDK.

          7] Or: assuming a conviction in this case, does Manafort plead guilty in the foreign agent/tampering case, and then incriminate others; or does he plead guilty in that case and take the weight himself; or does he get pardoned?

          I think Manafort’s laundering/evasion is a really big deal regardless of the “dramatic electoral” story CNN wants to tell. I think the mechanics of the laundering are fascinating and the scope of the evasion quite large. I once successfully defended a tax evasion case (court appointed!) over $218K of alleged unreported income so you can see how I would think $15M+ was a biggie.

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        • ScottC, on August 2, 2018 at 5:49 pm said:

          Mark:

          The point of my question was to challenge your notion that no one is connecting the Manafort indictments to Trump. It seems to me that connecting Manafort’s legal problems with Trump in the public mind is not only the primary goal of the the media/left, but is the only thing that explains why it is even remotely newsworthy. To mock Trump as if he is stating something that no one disputes doesn’t make sense to me, and is a complete misreading of the media/political situation.

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        • markinaustin, on August 3, 2018 at 10:44 am said:

          He was campaign chair as a volunteer during a time relevant to the indictments, so the indictments should be newsworthy. Maybe comparable to the Agnew indictment, in that respect. Agnew was independently crooked from everything else that went on in the Nixon Admin and it was unrelated to Watergate, but it was still newsworthy. The speculative spin is of course over the top, but I cannot resist belittling the tweets which are a constant source of WTF moments for me.

          And my point was that the prosecution wasn’t connecting this indictment to Trump, nor to the campaign, nor to Russian meddling. Perhaps I did not make that clear or overstated it because it is so obvious to me.

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        • ScottC, on August 3, 2018 at 12:57 pm said:

          Mark:

          Maybe comparable to the Agnew indictment, in that respect.

          I think the indictment of a sitting, elected US official is far more newsworthy than the indictment of an ex-campaign manager.

          And my point was that the prosecution wasn’t connecting this indictment to Trump, nor to the campaign, nor to Russian meddling.

          Funnily enough, I think that was the point of Trump’s tweets, too.

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  3. jnc4p, on August 1, 2018 at 1:08 pm said:

    And California’s non-partisan redistricting commission was gamed.

    https://www.propublica.org/article/how-democrats-fooled-californias-redistricting-commission

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  4. Brent Nyitray, on August 1, 2018 at 6:53 pm said:

    Can’t say I have followed the Urban Meyer thing, but have we reached a point where you are required to fire an underlying for domestic violence allegations, and if you don’t do anything, your job is now in jeopardy?

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    • markinaustin, on August 2, 2018 at 8:37 am said:

      No.

      I still doubt Meyer will be fired, but this is apparently about him lying to the AD. Or so the SBN sources claim.

      Tressel got fired for lying about tattoos, or some such, so we know tOSU is touchy about relatively small change.

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    • Kevin S. Willis, on August 2, 2018 at 10:43 pm said:

      “Democrats should quit attacking Kavanaugh—full stop. It is unbecoming to block him simply because they want to, and they risk alienating intelligent people who see the obvious: He is the most qualified conservative for the job.”

      It’s a nice thing to say, but the whole process would have to stop the way it has been going. Dems will consider whatever they do to be nice in comparison to blocking Garland . . . I just don’t see either side wanting to stop their attacks and tricks at this point and lay down and get steamrolled.

      It all started with Bork!

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  6. Brent Nyitray, on August 2, 2018 at 12:22 pm said:

    In the words of LTMB, baby, why you make me hit you?

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  7. Let the mutherfuker burn!, on August 2, 2018 at 3:51 pm said:

    I honestly don’t understand why this is s bad thing for the U.S.

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    • Kevin S. Willis, on August 2, 2018 at 10:47 pm said:

      Accosta wants to become the exemplar of an entitled press that feels it is the 4th and most important branch of the imperial government and thus deserves the respect and deference of its royal personage at all times.

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    • jnc4p, on August 3, 2018 at 10:13 am said:

      “Fellow Americans are not the enemy of fellow Americans.”

      Oh yes they are. I have a lot more hate for “fellow Americans” than I do for foreigners based on the relative level of coercion that the two groups are trying to exercise over me.

      Liked by 1 person

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  9. Let the mutherfuker burn!, on August 2, 2018 at 9:22 pm said:

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    • Kevin S. Willis, on August 2, 2018 at 10:49 pm said:

      Incomplete. If the tweet is about how awful white people are and how they should die, that’s not racist because it’s just true.

      They idea that this represents some sort of double-standard is just so laughable, that there’s no reason to even treat the argument seriously, or talk about it in any way.

      White people complaining about such things is also just evidence of white privilege. Just so you know.

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      • Brent Nyitray, on August 3, 2018 at 9:17 am said:

        It is an attempt to create a cultural universe where the historically oppressed get to stick it to the historically privileged.

        The problem is that today’s “historically privileged” are guilty of nothing and today’s “historically oppressed” are not victims.

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        • Kevin S. Willis, on August 3, 2018 at 1:54 pm said:

          … Except historical victimhood has become a perceived benefit, like inherited titles or nobility or being born a member of a higher caste, so they are totally going to flout their being the right Lord Victimhood of North Oppression.

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        • Kevin S. Willis, on August 3, 2018 at 2:00 pm said:

          And, really. Imagine if you could have credibly just claimed titles and status as a noble just by citing some paper-thin rationale. Lots of caucasians in medieval England would certainly have loved to claim nobility-status just by the color of their skin. Or some other minor and common-as-water feature of their appearance or genetic heritage.

          It’s the new caste system, where the white straight men are the untouchables.

          Fortunately, as a class we are much better resourced in our place on the bottom of the class ladder.

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      • jnc4p, on August 3, 2018 at 10:15 am said:

        Meanwhile, people wonder why Trump’s popularity with white people continues to grow.

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        • Kevin S. Willis, on August 3, 2018 at 1:56 pm said:

          But it’s racist not to agree with the “white people should die” sentiment expressed by the pampered, latte-swilling victims of the modern era. So, white people should just understand that they should hate themselves and hate Trump and show up to vote against Trump, but hopefully also later kill themselves and leave their estate to some progressive charity or something.

          I don’t see why anybody should resent that sort of thinking. So: blue wave, blue wave!

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