United States

American companies are riding high on the optimism created by President Trump’s election victory, adding a staggering 298,000 jobs to the U.S. economy during Trump’s first month in office. That monster figure comes from ADP, a payroll processing company that surveys the U.S. job market. The number far exceeded the 190,000 new jobs that economists were forecasting. President Trump tweeted a self-congratulatory note from the @POTUS account, referencing the long overdue “surging” growth in the jobs market and admitting the numbers are “much more than expected!“ U.S.

Jane Timm from NBC was working very diligently today, on International Women's Day of all days, in order to set the record straight for you Trumpsters out there who believe that he's done anything at all on the jobs front (note: ADP said 298k new jobs were created in America for the month of February, far exceeding the forecast of 190k).
 

Via Patrick Cox of MauldinEconomics.com,

The US fertility rate fell again last year, marking the lowest rate of reproduction since the CDC started keeping records in 1909. This prompted the amusing Bloomberg headline, “Make America Mate Again.”

The above chart shows that in 2015, there were only 62.5 births per 1,000 women of childbearing age. That fertility rate dropped even further, touching 62.3 births per 1,000 women, in the first half of 2016.

Demographic Headwinds

In an "Onion-sounding" article in Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda, titled "Trump-Pump-Pump And Our Big Bang", Russian military expert Viktor Baranetz, a retired colonel and former defense ministry spokesman asserted that Russia has asymmetrical responses to the increase in the U.S. military budget.

The US economy continues to implode as inflation ignites.

GDP Now has collapsed from 3.4% in early February to 1.3% today. It will be revised even lower based on the awful deficit numbers (the US trade deficit hit a five year high in January).

Meanwhile, inflation is soaring.

The Fed tracks FOUR inflation metrics. They are Core CPI, Core PCE, Trimmed Mean CPI and Cleveland Median CPI.

Roughly all four are now at or above the Fed’s so-called “target” of 2%.

·      Core CPI is growing at an annualized rate of 2.1%.