Business

Submitted by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,

Now that’s a screaming case of the pot calling the kettle black if there ever was one. Mitt Romney has lashed out at The Donald for being a “phony and  fraud”, but consider this. During his 16-years at Bain Capital, fully one-fourth or $600 million of the firms cumulative $2.5 billion of profits were scalped from companies which went bankrupt soon after Mitt and his partners got out of town with the loot.

Jobs were good; earnings were a disaster - that's the best summary of today's jobs report.

As we noted earlier, February suffered the biggest ever monthly drop in average weekly earnings, because not only did hourly earnings drop but so did hours worked, resulting in far lower overall weekly wages.

What caused this? Nothing our readers don't already know: recall that in January, "70% Of Jobs Added In January Were Minimum Wage Waiters And Retail Workers."

BlackRock's Gold ETF (IAU) has seen fund inflows every day in 2016 (no outflows at all) and with the stock trading above its NAV for most of the year, the world's largest asset manager has made a significant decision:

• *BLACKROCK SAYS ISSUANCE OF GOLD TRUST SHARES SUSPENDED
•  *BLACKROCK SAYS SUSPENSION DUE TO DEMAND FOR GOLD

BlackRock Statement:

Submitted by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

Just stunning.

German newspaper Der Spiegel reported yesterday that the Bavarian Banking Association has recommended that its member banks start stockpiling PHYSICAL CASH.

Europe, of course, has been battling with negative interest rates for quite some time.

What this means is that commercial banks are being charged interest for holding wholesale deposits at the European Central Bank.

The headline jobs number was certainly good, beating expectations and well higher than last month's disappointing (and upward revised) 182K print. However, a quick look below the headline reveals an amazing statistic: while we already noted that average hourly earnings posted only their first decline since December 2014, and just the 6th in the past decade, declining by -0.1%, what is the real surprise is that average weekly hours worked also dropped substantially by 0.2 from 34.6 to 34.4.