Labor

Remember when everyone was excited about wage growth re-appearing and escape velocity, and textbook wage inflation appearing thanks to tight labor markets... well that's all gone! Average weekly earnings grew at just 0.5% YoY in November - the slowest pace of wage growth since July 2014.

In fact real average weekly earnings decline 0.4% in November MoM (despite the post-Trump exuberance)

Probably time for calls for $20 minimum wage.. or how about $30?

"Some of the participants, but not all of the participants, did incorporate some assumption of a change in fiscal policy into their projections. And that may have been a factor that was one of several that occasioned these shifts.  But I want to emphasize that the shifts that you see here are really very tiny."

     - Janet Yellen, December 14, 2016 press conference

A few days ago we noted that the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System (DPFP) took the unprecedented step of halting withdrawals from their DROP fund after a "run on the bank" pushed to the entire pension system, and the City of Dallas, to the brink of liquidity crisis (see "In Unprecedented Move, Dallas Pension System Suspends Withdrawals").  Now, a local CBS affiliate in Dallas is reporting that the pension crisis is driving a massive surge in police resignations.   

“National Security” Is the Protective Cloak for Government Criminality

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46025.htm

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After struggling to raise debt from third parties to repair crumbling infrastructure, the state of New Jersey has come up with a "clever" approach to fundraising that entails selling debt to their own insolvent pension funds...something we've dubbed the "Pension Ponzi Squared."  Of course, because when everybody else shuns your debt for being too risky who better to sell it to than yourself?