Bank and Investment Bank credibility!  June U.S. Jobs Report

---

As said in yesterday’s Newsletter: “while allegations are just that until they are either proved or disproved, whether it is fair or unfair, even allegations can lead to feelings of discomfort and worse on the part of bank customers, retail investors, institutional investors, and others”. If there are enough negative allegations aimed at specific banks and investment banks, whether or not such allegations are ever proved, there has to be spillover resulting in a negative cloud over the entire financial services industry. Important questions from 20,000 feet then have to be:

• if any of these allegations are proved, at what point are governments, regulators, financial market participants and the general public individually (and perhaps eventually collectively) likely to say ‘enough is enough’?; and,
• if indeed one or more of those parties do say ‘enough is enough’, what will be the consequences to a world economic system that already is rife with very serious problems – where these problems currently seem to be ‘headed in the wrong direction’?

JPMorgan Probed Over Possible Power Market Manipulation Source: CompliancEX, from Reuters, July 5, 2012. READ THIS ARTICLE in 1 minute. Spain’s Banking Crisis Moves Into the Courtroom Source: CompliancEX, from the New York Times, July 5, 2012. READ THIS ARTICLE in 1 minute. June U.S. Jobs Report Why Read: To review the summary of possible wide-ranging consequences of the June U.S. Jobs Report in this commentary. Featured Article: One of what likely will be hundreds of articles in mainstream media and internet commentary in the next 48 hours and beyond. Commentary: At 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time this morning the U.S. Labor Department announced:

• 80,000 job additions in June, and no adjustment to prior months job additions; and,
• a continued official U.S. unemployment rate of 8.2%.

Within minutes, the Dow Jones Futures, which had been down 13 points immediately before the announcement had dropped further to be down 73 points. At the time this is being written at 10:45 a.m. Eastern Time, the New York markets are open, and the Dow and S&P are down 147 (1.14%) and 14 (0.99%) respectively. Gold is down U.S.$13, to U.S.$1,592. This is both bad and or potentially influential news on a number of fronts, including:

• the average number of jobs created in the U.S. in Q2 was an anemic 75,000 per month, down from 226,000 per month in Q1;
• it is broadly thought that the U.S. needs to create 150,000 net new jobs per month simply to stay even with population growth;
• U.S. consumer confidence may drop further;
• any hope of U.S. housing market recovery is likely to be dampened;
• U.S. manufacturing protectionism, with all its both positive and negative implications for the U.S. economy, may once again ‘rear its head’;
• the U.S. debt ceiling issue may become more prominent more quickly, as the U.S. Federal deficit may grow for both ‘new program’ and ‘lower revenue’ reasons;
• the Federal Reserve will now have to increasingly think about further quantitative easing, particularly if the financial markets begin to perform badly; and,
• irrespective of whether the jobs reports ought to influence November’s Presidential election to the extent they may, count on Mr. Romney and his band of merry men making as much ‘Obama Negativity’ out of this as they possibly can. And further count on at least some Main Street American’s to listen to them.

Depending on one’s politics, aside from the last point, none of the foregoing can be seen as ‘good economic news’ for America. June Jobs Report: U.S. Adds 80,000 Jobs; Unemployment Rate Unchanged Source: Huffington Post, Christopher S. Rugaber, July 6, 2012. READ THIS ARTICLE in 2 minutes.

---