110 Months of Job Gains.

Weekend News Items by John Ellis.

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1. The U.S. job market strengthened in November, as hiring jumped and unemployment returned to a half-century low, adding fuel to the economic expansion. Employers added 266,000 jobs last month—the fastest pace since 312,000 in January—and the jobless rate dipped to 3.5%, matching September as the lowest level since 1969, the Labor Department said ​yesterday​. Wages also advanced, up 3.1% from a year earlier. “This is a ‘who would have thought moment?’” said Becky Frankiewicz, president of staffing company ManpowerGroup’s North America division. “No one would have ever guessed we could be sitting at 3.5% unemployment with 110 months of job gains.”​ (via The Wall Street Journal)​

2. The U.S. economy reached an important milestone in October that ought to put it on a more sustainable footing going forward: wage growth eclipsed mortgage rates for the first time since 1972. Average hourly earnings for production and nonsupervisory employees -- who comprise more than 80% of the U.S. private-sector workforce -- rose 3.8% from a year earlier in October, according to Labor Department data published Friday. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate in the U.S. in October was about 3.7%, according to Freddie Mac data. A year ago, before the Fed began easing, mortgage rates were closer to 4.9%.​ (via Bloomberg News)​

3. Robots have replaced thousands of routine jobs on Wall Street. Now, they’re coming for higher-ups.​ ​That’s the contention of Marcos Lopez de Prado, a Cornell University professor and the former head of machine learning at AQR Capital Management LLC, who testified in Washington on Friday about the impact of artificial intelligence on capital markets and jobs. The use of algorithms in electronic markets has automated the jobs of tens of thousands of execution traders worldwide, and it’s also displaced people who model prices and risk or build investment portfolios, he said.​ (via Bloomberg News)

4. Central banks must embrace the revolution under way in digital money to ensure they remain at the heart of the global payments system, according to the head of the Bank of International Settlements. Agustin Carstens’s argument is that while the private sector “excels at customer-facing activity,” central banks provide the basis for trust, ensure liquidity and set standards. He’s unenthusiastic about Bitcoin and worried that big tech companies like Facebook offering payment services means they could become unfairly dominant because of their existing data resources.​ Mr. Carstens made these remarks at a speech at Princeton University two days ago. The full text of the speech is here.​ (via Bloomberg News, BIS)

5. President Trump’s top economic adviser said Friday that there are “no arbitrary deadlines” for completing a limited trade deal with China ahead of a new set of tariffs planned for this month. “These are presidential decisions,” White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said Friday on CNBC. “But, the fact remains that [Dec. 15] is a very important date, with respect to a no-go or a go on tariffs.”​ ​(via The Wall Street Journal)​

6. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson bested Jeremy Corbyn by the finest of margins in the last televised debate of the election campaign, a snap YouGov poll suggested. The pollster found that 52 per cent of Britons believed the prime minister and Conservative leader won and 48 per cent believed the Labour leader won. As the result is within the margin of error it is effectively a draw. Those who said they did not know who had won were removed from the results. Chris Curtis, YouGov’s political research manager, said the poll showed that the public was “divided” with “most Labour voters thinking Jeremy Corbyn won, most Conservative voters thinking Boris Johnson won, and very few people changing their minds.” He added: “But given the Conservatives went into this debate in the lead, they will hope the lack of a knockout blow means they can maintain this until voting day.”​ ​For the record, 52%-to-48% is a statistical tie.​ (via The Times of London)

7. ​Bloomberg reports that ​Boris Johnson is heading for a clear victory in next week’s U.K. general election, according to senior officials in both his ruling Conservatives and the main opposition Labour Party. Speaking on condition of anonymity, five senior figures drawn from the two biggest parties said Johnson’s campaign promise to “get Brexit done” is winning ground in Labour heartlands in northern England. The officials are familiar with high-level discussions in their parties about the potential outcome.​ Their clairvoyance regarding the outcome is something of a first. (via Bloomberg News)

8. A week to go before the election and the Conservative vote appears to have peaked. The party’s share hit 42% about a fortnight ago and has not advanced since – a level that is intriguingly similar to the 42.34% result achieved by Theresa May in the last general election. No wonder then that the Conservative message from that point has been to warn against complacency – “things are MUCH tighter than they seem” Dominic Cummings wrote – with memories of Labour’s late recovery in 2017 lingering in the minds of party insiders. Their fears appear to have been partially justified as the last two weeks has seen Labour gradually squeeze the Liberal Democrat vote, a process that began after Jo Swinson’s appearance on Question Time on 22 November – where the hostility from the studio audience was unexpectedly pronounced – and continued as Boris Johnson’s poll lead lengthened the following week.​ (via The Guardian)​

9. Reddit says a Russian disinformation operation appeared to be “tied to” the dissemination on its online discussion platform of classified UK-US trade documents that were used by the Labour party in its recent election campaigning. The social media site said on Friday that it had examined the account that had first posted the leaked 451-page “dossier” of UK government documents and discovered a network of dozens of accounts that appeared to be manipulating its system in order to promote the post. The discovery is an embarrassment to Labour after party leader Jeremy Corbyn highlighted the papers at a press conference last month, saying they proved the NHS would be “up for sale” if Boris Johnson were to forge a post-Brexit trade deal with the US — claims that the UK prime minister denies. It is unclear how the documents first came to the attention of the Labour party. ​(via Financial Times)​

10. European powers will take the first step towards re-imposing international sanctions on Iran in the coming weeks if Tehran further violates the 2015 nuclear deal, diplomats said. The warning, an escalation of European pressure on Iran, puts the two sides on a collision course. A conflict is likely in early January, when Iran is set to announce fresh steps to breach the deal. Iranian officials say their moves respond to Europe’s failure to protect them from the impact of withering sanctions the U.S. imposed after President Trump withdrew from the nuclear accord last year.​ ​(via The Wall Street Journal)​​

11. Research into the recent uprising in Iran asserts: "Our study shows that the current wave of protest is geographically widespread and most likely motivated by more than acute economic pain. We found that 20.5 percent of all Iranian counties had at least one day of protest in this wave (89 out of 429). Economic grievances sparked the initial surge of action, but once the protests began, they appeared to activate deeper, preexisting dissatisfactions with the Islamic Republic as a whole. In fact, our results indicate that while the regime gained support following recent elections, specifically the 2017 presidential election, that support has since eroded."​ (via Foreign Affairs)​

12. Rockets have been fired at two Iraqi air bases this week where American military forces are stationed, a U.S. official said on Friday night. The attacks, on the Al Asad base on Tuesday and Balad on Thursday were believed to be the work of militants with ties to Iran, according to the official, who was granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. Seven rockets struck the perimeter of the Al Asad base, and five projectiles landed inside Balad. At Al Asad, the Iraqi army later found a truck rigged to fire rockets with seven empty tubes and eight unfired projectiles. No personnel were injured in any of the attacks, nor was there significant damage to facilities, the official said.​ (via Bloomberg News)​

13. Americans continue to prefer a healthcare system based on private insurance (54%) over a government-run healthcare system (42%). Support for a government-run system averaged 36% from 2010 to 2014 but has been 40% or higher each of the past five years. These results are based on Gallup's annual Health and Healthcare poll, conducted Nov. 1-14. Although more Americans have warmed to the idea of a greater government role in paying for healthcare, it remains the minority view in the U.S. This could create a challenge in a general election campaign for a Democratic presidential nominee advocating a "Medicare for All" or other healthcare plan that would greatly expand the government's role in the healthcare system.

14. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Friday put a one-week hold on a lower court’s order for President Trump’s bank records to be turned over to Congress. The stay issued by Justice Ginsburg came just three days after the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York said that Deutsche Bank and Capital One must cooperate with subpoenas of two Democratic-controlled committees in the House of Representatives. The release of the records had been expected to give Democrats a trove of documents about Mr. Trump’s financial dealings as they pursue impeachment.​ (via The New York Times)​​​​

15. The White House signaled on Friday that it did not intend to mount a defense of President Trump or otherwise participate in the House impeachment proceedings, sending Democrats a sharply worded letter that condemned the process as “completely baseless” and urged them to get it over with quickly. “House Democrats have wasted enough of America’s time with this charade,” the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, wrote in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee chairman, Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York. “You should end this inquiry now and not waste even more time with additional hearings.”​ (via The New York Times)​

16. The Federal Aviation Administration proposed a rare $3.9 million civil penalty against Boeing on Friday, alleging the company “knowingly submitted aircraft” to the agency for safety certification even after learning that crucial wing components “could not be used due to a failed strength test.”​ Here's what a former Boeing ​quality manager had to say about his former employer: "They started pressuring us to not document defects to work outside the procedures, to allow defective material to be installed without being corrected," said Barnett, about the new leadership team that oversaw its production...They started bypassing procedures and not maintaining configurement control of airplanes, not maintaining control of non-conforming parts — they just wanted to get the planes pushed out the door and make the cash register ring."​ ​(via The Washington Post, Big Think)

18. News Items Daily "Repo Report:" The Federal Reserve Bank of New York added $72.8 billion in temporary liquidity to financial markets​ yesterday. The intervention came via three-day repurchase agreements, or repos. The Fed took all the securities offered to it by eligible banks. Fed repo interventions take in Treasury and mortgage securities from eligible banks in what is effectively a short-term loan of central-bank cash, collateralized by the securities.​ (via The Wall Street Journal)​

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