Labor

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. 

Following October's disappointment (+147k), November's ADP employment printed a much better than expected 216k (over 170k exp), thanks to a notable downward revision to October to 119k. Goods-producing jobs dropped once again (-11k) with a renewed surge in services employment (+228k). While this November post-Trump spike is noteworthy (highest in 5 months), there continues to be a medium-term trend of weakening job growth in America.

A good post-trump spike, but the 24-month trend continues to deteriorate:

Spot the odd one out...

In just a couple of months, the largest pension fund in the United States, the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), will have to decide whether they'll rely on sound financial judgement and math to set their rate of return expectations going forward or whether they'll cave to political pressure to maintain artificially high return hurdles that they'll never meet but help to maintain their ponzi scheme a little longer.  The decision faced by CALPERS is whether their long-term assumed rate of return on assets should be lowered from the cu

Starting tomorrow Uber drivers from around the country will join the union-backed "Fight For $15" campaign that plans to hold protests in two-dozen cities including San Francisco, Miami and Boston.  The organization's twitter feed describes the protest as a "national day of disruption" which seems slightly less than a "constructive" approach to the very serious issue of the federal minimum wage.  Per Reuters:

Just days after Markit reported a surprising upward impulse for the US manufacturing sector under President-elect Donald Trump, moments ago we learned that the US service industry declined in the month of November. As Markit notes, “the November PMI surveys provide the first snapshot of US business conditions in the wake of the surprise election result, and show a reassuring picture of sustained solid economic expansion and hiring."