Obama Gives Us a Hint: Look for a Hot Jobs Number on Friday - Mission Accomplished

Since he is the commander-in-chief of the Washington bureaucracy that churns out government statistics, it is a good bet that the boss' expectations will be met by those who serve him. So watch those short positions into this Friday's Non-Farm Payrolls report. The President has declared that an economic recovery is at hand.

Obama gave a longish speech at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh today blaming most of the problems in the US on the Republicans and a few greedy Banks, extolling the reforms in healthcare and the financial system that he has been able to push through despite the minority opposition, and recalcitrant leftish supporters, after he saved the country by the unfortunate but unavoidably necessary bank bailouts.

His speech sounded good. And if you do not look too closely at what is going on, and how things are being run, and the lack of actual reform, you might have had a feel good moment. It was about as effectively staged as the case that George W made to the American people for the invasion of Iraq. And it was probably just as phony and self-serving.

I come away feeling that Lincoln had it exactly right. There will be a die hard group who will never lose faith in their party, or any of their chosen leaders, and will find desperate comfort in partisan blindness.

"If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can't fool all of the people all of the time." Abraham Lincoln

But the great majority of the American people are waking up, and that spells trouble in the November elections for most incumbent politicians. So the pace and velocity of the spin will have to be adjusted. Hence the speech today. And the outlook for the tortured American economic system, and the official descriptions of it.

For a refresher, here is Matt Taibbi's caustic expose of the financial reform process. Wall Street's War

Dow Jones Newswire
Obama Says He Expects Strong US Jobs Report Friday
By Jared A. Favole

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- President Barack Obama, speaking Wednesday at Carnegie Mellon University on the economy, said he expects strong job growth to be reported Friday.

The Labor Department is scheduled to report May's employment statistics Friday. Economists expect the unemployment rate to slide to 9.7% from 9.9% in April and for the report to show the U.S. added as many as 515,000 jobs last month after non farm payrolls rose by 290,000 in April.

Obama said an economy that was "once shrinking at an alarming rate" has now grown for three consecutive quarters and is moving in the right direction.

I watched this speech live on Bloomberg television. It is no exaggeration. Obama was declaring mission accomplished, for the record. So if something beyond his control should happen to derail the recovery, well, that could not be his fault.

Bank of Canada Becomes First of G7 to Raise Interest Rates

Interesting move by the Bank of Canada to raise, albeit cautiously, its key interest rate by 25 basis points to .50%.

The reason for the increase is the obvious 6.1% growth in 1st quarter GDP led largely by housing and consumer spending, counterbalanced by slack inflation and wage growth.

So, Banque du Canada wishes to take a little off the top of its own housing bubble, and please its friends in the US by strengthening its currency against the dollar, so as to not further imbalance the significant exporting activity between the two trading partners.

I doubt very much that Canada will raise again in July, especially as the non-recovery in the US becomes more apparent. As I recall Canada fared much better in the last Great Depression because their more conservative banking sector required less reform, and offered less damage to the real economy. It appears that this will work in their favor again, despite some looming problems perhaps in housing.

Still, it is interesting to see the commodity strong countries like Australia and Canada raising rates even while Europe and the US economies remain wobbly.

Bank of Canada Press Release
Bank of Canada increases overnight rate target to 1/2 per cent and re-establishes normal functioning of the overnight market

OTTAWA – The Bank of Canada today announced that it is raising its target for the overnight rate by one-quarter of one percentage point to 1/2 per cent. The Bank Rate is correspondingly raised to 3/4 per cent and the deposit rate is kept at 1/4 per cent, thus re-establishing the normal operating band of 50 basis points for the overnight rate.

The global economic recovery is proceeding but is increasingly uneven across countries, with strong momentum in emerging market economies, some consolidation of the recovery in the United States, Japan and other industrialized economies, and the possibility of renewed weakness in Europe. The required rebalancing of global growth has not yet materialized.

In most advanced economies, the recovery remains heavily dependent on monetary and fiscal stimulus. In general, broad forces of household, bank, and sovereign deleveraging will add to the variability, and temper the pace, of global growth. Recent tensions in Europe are likely to result in higher borrowing costs and more rapid tightening of fiscal policy in some countries – an important downside risk identified in the April Monetary Policy Report (MPR).

Thus far, the spillover into Canada from events in Europe has been limited to a modest fall in commodity prices and some tightening of financial conditions.

Activity in Canada is unfolding largely as expected. The economy grew by a robust 6.1 per cent in the first quarter, led by housing and consumer spending. Employment growth has resumed. Going forward, household spending is expected to decelerate to a pace more consistent with income growth. The anticipated pickup in business investment will be important for a more balanced recovery.

CPI inflation has been in line with the Bank’s April projections. The outlook for inflation reflects the combined influences of strong domestic demand, slowing wage growth, and overall excess supply.

In this context, the Bank has decided to raise the target for the overnight rate to 1/2 per cent and to re-establish the normal functioning of the overnight market.

This decision still leaves considerable monetary stimulus in place, consistent with achieving the 2 per cent inflation target in light of the significant excess supply in Canada, the strength of domestic spending, and the uneven global recovery.

Given the considerable uncertainty surrounding the outlook, any further reduction of monetary stimulus would have to be weighed carefully against domestic and global economic developments.

Information note:
The next scheduled date for announcing the overnight rate target is 20 July 2010. A full update of the Bank’s outlook for the economy and inflation, including risks to the projection, will be published in the MPR on 22 July 2010.

Net Asset Value of Certain Precious Metal Funds and Trusts

Sprott completed its premium-busting unit offering and is now using the cash proceeds to procure bullion for the fund at an aggressive pace that suggests that it had made arrangements beforehand.

SP June Futures Daily chart

This market seems to be all technical play, lacking genuine investment interest as opposed to short term speculation.

If the 1070 level cannot hold into the open we will problem go down to retest that low around 1035.

Non-farm Payrolls report at the end of this week. Watch out for more games, wash and rinse. But a 'bad number' could be the spike in the rally hopes for those of the bullish persuasion. Since I do not view this market as 'real' and engaged in price discovery it is hard to operate in it with conviction.