NDP day!

As the Barry Ritholtz blog would say. 180,00 jobs and some revisions to the prior month. Boring!! Boring!! Its pretty hard to say that job growth is robust in the US. In fact I would say its tepid at best. Previous expansions produced far more jobs and with the population increasing job growth could be described as downright bad.

A lot of energy has been spent debating outsourcing and I think a lot of those arguments have some merit. However, capital spending has not returned because of the late 90's. And I dont think it has anything to do with CEOs not wanting to spend for the future. The real driver is HF's and people like Carl Icahn who has no interest in the long term. Its about the next 10 minutes. Our financial markets have become so speculative and lucrative that they have made any kind of longterm planning almost impossible and that hurts the other 99 percent of americans. Instead they get stuck with high gas prices, housing, and taxes which all but wipe out any kind of wage gains. 2008 is going to be a tricky year. Populism is going to rise. If the US wants to be the same envy of the world for the next one hundred years we are going to have to balance the short term with the longterm. I dont think there is a lot of appreciation for the extrodinary financial conditions. In fact a very strong case can be made that credit can't get any easier to obtain. PE is going through a bubble right were housing left off. Part of the problem with the constant CA recycling is its forcing lenders to take unheard of risks. How long this can go on is beyond anyones grasp.

As for the markets. The same trades get put right back on. Sell the yen. The fed is tight at 5.25 percent, but asia is refusing to let any kind of currency appreciation. Now its feeding into a light stagflation scenario.