Business

Yesterday morning we noted a very disturbing trend: over the past three days, a shortage of 10 Year treasury paper has manifested that has grown more and more acute with every passing day, until the repo rate hit as low as -2.95% yesterday morning just shy of the "fails" -3.00% minimum rate, the lowest on record, and suggesting that the marketwide treasury shortage has never been worse as a result of a huge short overlay.

We already know that US jobs "growth" continues entirely on the back of (seasonally adjusted) minimum wage job growth, and since this has been one of our preferred topics exposing the hollow core of the so-called "recovery", we once again show the divergence between the two job categories that have come to define the New Paranormal: waiters and bartenders, aka the only truly growing (minimum wage) job category, and manufacturing workers - well paid jobs which sadly are no longer being created.

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: