CNBC: Hiring surged in February as the U.S. economic activity picked up amid a progressive drop in Covid-19 cases and vaccines provided hope of more growth ahead.
The Labor Department on Friday reported that nonfarm payrolls jumped by 379,000 for the month and the unemployment rate fell to 6.2%. That compared to expectations of 210,000 new jobs and the unemployment rate to hold steady from the 6.3% rate in January.
An alternative measure of unemployment that includes discouraged workers and those holding part-time jobs for economic reasons was unchanged at 11.1%. Read More
Times of Israel: On the eve of his historic trip to Iraq, Pope Francis paid tribute Thursday to those who have suffered from years of violence, saying he came as a “pilgrim of peace.”
“Then I saw another beast coming up out of the earth, and he had two horns like a lamb and spoke like a dragon” Revelation 13:11
In a video message, the 84-year-old offered his hand to “brothers and sisters of other religions,” but also highlighted the heavy toll paid by Iraq’s Christian communities, saying there had been “too many martyrs.”
“I come as a pilgrim of peace in search of fraternity, animated by the desire to pray together and to walk together, also with the brothers and sisters of other religions,” he added. Read More
CNBC: Fed Chairman Jerome Powell expressed little worry about inflation and provided no indication of policy changes ahead.
Bonds and stocks both sold off on the comments.
Inflation is poison for bonds as it causes rising yields and falling prices.
Inflation lowers the value of future interest payments on bond
The bond market sold off Thursday when Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell expressed little worry about inflation and provided no indication of policy changes ahead.
In an exchange with The Wall Street Journal, the central bank leader acknowledged that an economy recuperating from the depths of the Covid-19 pandemic could see some price pressures ahead. Read More
PJ Media: During his historic speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Sunday, former President Donald Trump claimed that substantial election fraud changed the outcome of the 2020 election. When Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN) uploaded a video of Trump’s remarks on YouTube, the platform removed that video and suspended RSBN’s YouTube account. It remains unclear whether the platform has removed other videos of Trump’s speech.
“RSBN has been suspended from YouTube for two weeks because of the Trump [CPAC] speech, which violated their guidelines on election misinformation,” RSBN announced on Twitter Thursday. “The video was approaching 4 million views. They have also removed it from their platform.”
RSBN, a conservative media company founded in July 2015, became known for live-stream coverage of Trump’s rallies on YouTube. In December 2020, it began uploading videos to the alternative video streaming service Rumble. RSBN covered many legal hearings alleging fraud in the 2020 election, streamed Trump’s January 6 speech before the Capitol riot, and reached almost 1.5 million subscribers on YouTube in January.
RSBN later claimed that “even some of the major [news] networks had their video of Trump’s speech removed, though it is not clear if they also received a two week suspension and/or strike on their accounts like we did. Doubt it.” Read More
CNBC: U.S. stocks fell sharply on Thursday after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell failed to reassure investors that the central bank would keep surging bond yields and inflation expectations in check.
The S&P 500 last traded down 1.6% after dropping 2.5% at its session low. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 440 points. At one point, the blue-chip benchmark tumbled more than 700 points. The Nasdaq Composite fell 2.3% as growth stocks came under pressure amid rising rates. Apple slipped 1.6%, while Tesla dropped 5.4%. The heavy losses pushed the Nasdaq into the red for the year.
The tech-heavy benchmark also fell into correction territory, down more than 10% from its recent high on an intraday basis. Read More
Breitbart: Freedom House on Wednesday released the 2021 edition of its annual Freedom in the World report, charting an alarming “deterioration of democracy” around the world in 2020.
So they worshiped the dragon who gave authority to the beast; and they worshiped the beast, saying, “Who is like the beast? Who is able to make war with him?” Revelation 13:4
The report cited the “malign influence of the regime in China” as one of the most “profound” factors in the rising tide of authoritarianism.
Of course, the pandemic that swept out of China to destabilize the world was a major factor as well, and it was a powerful force multiplier for the identified malevolence of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). As the Freedom House report, subtitled Democracy Under Siege, put it:
The spread of the Wuhan coronavirus was accompanied by a matching spread of “excessive surveillance, discriminatory restrictions on freedoms like movement and assembly, and arbitrary or violent enforcement of such restrictions by police and nonstate actors,” which is tantamount to saying the CCP’s worldview and ideology spread along with its virus. A growing number of ruling regimes took advantage of the coronavirus to “quash opposition and fortify their power,” and China is the world leader in exports for opposition-quashing tactics and technologies. Read More
JPost: Iran intentionally polluted the Mediterranean Sea and Israel’s shores in an act of ecological terrorism, causing the greatest environmental disaster in Israel’s history, Environmental Protection Minister Gila Gamliel said on Wednesday.
“This pollution has people who are responsible for it and have to pay the price. Our nature is damaged, our animals are harmed, thanks to merciless environmental criminals,” Gamliel
said.
Gamliel explained that, following a two-week investigation, the Environmental Protection Ministry found that the ship that leaked the crude oil, called the Emerald, was owned by a Libyan company and sailed from Iran to Syria. It departed Iran, turning off its automatic identification system (AIS) – which transmits its location to other ships in the area. It turned the AIS on as it went through the Suez Canal, and then off again as it approached Israel’s shores.
The ship remained within tens of kilometers of Israel’s shores, within Israel’s economic waters, for nearly a full day, spilling large amounts of oil on February 1-2, with its AIS off.
Then it continued on to Syria, where it turned on its transmitter, and it returned to Iran, turning off its AIS as it passed Israel. It is currently in Iran. Read More
Zero Hedge: Powell was not concerned by higher yields early last week but he may change his tune on 4 March
Brainard has already admitted that more recent price action has caught her attention
We expect Powell to flag scope for a policy response if rising long-term yields threaten recovery
The key event for the market this week would usually be the US non-farm payroll report but focus is instead centred on Fed Chair Powell’s speech on 4 March. We doubt that he will signal near-term Fed policy action in response to the recent UST yield volatility. Given current yield levels and financial conditions, it is difficult to justify such a move without appearing to be driven solely by market developments. Read More
Breitbart: The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday passed H.R. 1, otherwise known as the “For the People Act,” which Republicans warn will compromise election integrity and ultimately lead to the federalization of U.S. elections.
The Democrat-led House passed the legislation on party lines, 220 to 210. A summary of the bill notes that it “expands voter registration (e.g., automatic and same-day registration) and voting access (e.g., vote-by-mail and early voting)” and imposes limits on removing voters from voter rolls.
Republicans have warned that the Democrat legislation would vastly reduce the power of the states to control and operate elections at the local level.
“If this bill passes, it puts in all these terrible provisions,” Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative and a senior legal fellow of the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, said during a January appearance on Breitbart News Daily.
“It’s a federal micromanagement of the election process, and everything that folks on the left want to reduce the integrity [and] the security of the election process is in there,” he continued.
“If you’re a state like Alabama or Texas that has a voter ID law, you might as well forget it, Read More
Zero Hedge: There has been spreading chatter that during Jerome Powell’s upcoming appearance at a Wall Street Journal virtual event on Thursday at noon, the Fed Chair may unveil changes to Fed bond buying and potentially unveil Operation Twist 3.0. As DataTrek‘s Nicholas Colas asks, “will he preview a change in the central bank’s quantitative easing program, one that shifts purchases to the long end to bring down 10-year Treasury yields?”
In response, Colas says that the question sent him to the academic literature and historical record concerning the prior 2 times the Fed delved into implicit yield curve control:
The San Francisco Fed published an analysis in 2011 about the 1961 “Operation Twist”. It found that the net effect was to push long term yields down by 0.15 percentage points. The paper says this was “highly statistically significant, but moderate”. (Link to the full article.)
This is what happened to 10-year yields during the September 2011 – December 2012 “Operation Twist 2” period (chart from January 2010 to December 2013):
Colas’ takeaway is that “it is this more recent history – one that shows the Fed can absolutely suppress long term interest rates by 100 bp or more – that will be on investors’ minds as they tune in to hear Chair Powell on Thursday.” Read More
