Mostly: Classical

[amarksp]

Frank, also keep a close eye on copper, nickel and base metals for me... First we have Rogers then we have Faber predicting a hard landing in China and now this snippet from contraryinvestor... It may be a time for a reassessement of my NNO, RNO and even NovaGold (NG is 40% gold 60% base metals at present prices).

"There is absolutely no question that the large jump in construction jobs is related to the aftermath of hurricane cleanup and reconstruction efforts. These jobs will not go away over night, but in like manner it's hard to categorize them as potentially permanent. In fact, this is the single largest one month jump in construction jobs since...March of 2000. But it is also clear that manufacturing jobs fell. Remember, last week we suggested that US goods exports are in danger of weakening/falling based on anecdotal data in the ISM manufacturing report. We are convinced that China is now and is set to continue slowing much more than the consensus expects at the moment. The loss of manufacturing positions is clearly also a reflection of the fact that US goods remain uncompetitive in the global economy, despite the weakness in the dollar to date. As usual, it's all happening in services when it comes to payrolls. But you'll also remember from our discussion last week that the US service export surplus is fast approaching zero. We are not growing net exports of US services. In fact, quite the opposite over the last half decade. In large measure, growth in US service jobs is largely related to the physical acts of domestic financing and spending. You remember, the new definition of prosperity and wealth creation that you can now find in most any modern day economics textbook, right? Although temp jobs made up a touch over 50% of the growth in professional services jobs for October, non-temp professional services job growth was the greatest number seen in two years. That's a good thing. Lastly, although we will not produce the table again here, the birth/death model of job guesstimates for the month (40,000) made up only 12% of the total body count additions for October. One of the smallest numbers we have seen in a while."