Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
The point is the present system cannot endure.
Despite all the happy talk about "recovery" and higher growth, wages have gone nowhere since 2000--and for the bottom 20% of workers, they've gone nowhere since the 1970s.
If there is one common theme across sellside previews of tomorrow's nonfarm payrolls number, expected at 180K after a surprising jump to 209K in July, it is to brace for disappointment, or in Wall Street parlance, "downside risks." And it's not because of Harvey which hit the US far too late in the month to be reflected in the monthly payrolls.
Following Chicago PMI's collapse in July, August failed to provde any bounce in the soft survey data, printing unchanged at 58.9 (July was revised slightly higher).
While marking the eighteenth consecutive above-50 reading, this month's unchanged result follows July's sharp decline that snapped a run of five straight monthly increases in business optimism.
Only 2 components managed any improvement in August (production and new orders) with both employment and inventories weak:
ADP reports the US economy added 237,000 jobs in August, notably more than the expected 185k. This is the biggest addition since March, and follows upward revisions for July. While Services dominated (adding 204k), Goods-producing jobs rose 33k (with manufacturing adding 16k).
Medium- and Large-seized firms added the most jobs in August.
Manufacturing added 16,000 jobs in August....
Trade/Transportantion and Leisyure added the most jobs in August...
Underfunded public pensions are undoubtedly the biggest threat facing America's long-term economic stability. As we've argued numerous times in the past, the size of the aggregate underfunding, $5-$8 trillion depending on your assumptions, is simply too large for even the overly generous American taxpayer to cover.
Of course, one of the biggest contributors to this inevitable crisis is the state of Kentucky which has a funding hole of $33-$84 billion, depending on your discount rate assumptions, according to an analysis recently conducted by PFM Group.