Business

The US economy added 235,000 jobs in February, beating upward revised expectations of 200K, in-line with whisper expctations of 233K. Last month's report was upward revised from 227K to 238K with the net addition for the past two months coming to +9K.

Nonfarm private payrolls rose 227k up from 221k prior and above the estimate of 215k. Manufacturing payrolls rose 28k after rising 11k in the prior month; this also beat the +10k consensus estimate.

On Friday 3 March 2017, in a surprise announcement with implications for the global silver price, the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) informed its members that the current administrator and calculation agent of its recently launched LBMA Silver Price auction, Thomson Reuters and the CME Group respectively, will be pulling out of providing their services to the problematic London-based silver price benchmark within the near future. Thomson Reuters and the CME Group also issued statements on 3 March identical to that of the LBMA.

Via Kevin Muir of The Macro Tourist blog,

Remember a week ago when all the crude oil bulls told us how the massive net speculative position was nothing to worry about? And to be fair, for the longest time they seemed to be right. Crude oil prices were extremely sticky, refusing to budge from their elevated level.

Following The House's decisive approval of a $578 billion spending bill to keep the US armed forces operating through September, Gallup recently conducted a poll to gauge public opinion on the current level of U.S. military expenditure. The results may surprise some...

As Statista's Niall McCarthy notes, Gallup found that 37 percent of people think the government is spending too little compared to 31 percent who say it's too much and 28 percent who think it's about right.

Via Benjamin Masters of RealInvestmentAdvice.com,