Business

Authored by Jesse Eisinger, originally posted at ProPublica.org,

Steven Mnuchin has made a career out of being lucky.

The former Goldman Sachs banker nominated to become Donald Trump’s treasury secretary had the perspicacity to purchase a collapsed subprime mortgage lender soon after the financial crisis, getting a sweet deal from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Now, if he’s confirmed, he will likely be able to take advantage of a tax perk given to government officials.

A series of stronger than expected data in recent days pushed Goldman Sachs to up their payrolls growth expectation to 200k (above the 180k expectations), but they note that while the unemployment rate is likely to drop (to 4.8%), average hourly earnings may disappoint. Of course, they add, any non-narrative-confirming misses on the data can likely be explained away by "weather effects and residual seasonality."

According to Bloomberg, world equity markets gained $635b in market cap, while bonds lost $1.7t -- leaving a deficit of more than $1 trillion since the election. Much of those losses were absorbed by foreign governments, the cucks participating in never ending QE schemes. The balance sheets of the ECB and Federal Reserve are looking much worse now than just one month ago.

source: Bloomberg

We've written several times over the past couple of months about the epic meltdown of the the Dallas Police and Firefighters Pension (DPFP) (see here, here and here for background).  It all started when the Pension Board discovered that one of their real estate managers had been consistently overmarking illiquid real estate investments.  That discovery resulted in an FBI investigation of the manager and a $1BN write down for the DPFP.  In the wake of the writedowns, Dallas policemen and firefighters rushed for the exits and withdrew over $500mm in assets. 

Submitted by Michael McDonald via OilPrice.com,

It is no secret that the coal industry has faced hard times for the last few years. Environmental concerns led President Obama to institute more stringent regulatory requirements, while cheap natural gas created intense competition. Against that backdrop, many coal industry participants and investors hoped that President Trump would be able to reverse those fortunes.