Baltic
Dry Index. 2981 -56
Brent
Crude 93.09
Spot
Gold 4354 Spot Silver 70.00
U
S 2 Year Yield 4.17 +0.12
US
Federal Debt. 39.215 trillion
US
GDP 32.187 trillion
June 6, 1944. Operation Overlord: D-Day begins as the
156,000-strong Allied Expeditionary Force lands in Normandy, France, during
World War II
The
US employment report on Friday was surprisingly strong, unexpected and routed way
over priced stocks.
Adding
to technology stock misery, the S&P will not follow NASDAQ and fast track SpaceX
and other tech IPO stocks into the S&P indexes.
Look
away from US Treasury yields now.
U.S.
payrolls rose by 172,000 in May, much more than expected; unemployment at 4.3%
Published
Fri, Jun 5 2026 8:31 AM EDT Updated Fri, Jun 5 2026 2:51 PM EDT
Job
growth unexpectedly surged in May as the U.S. labor market continued a solid
year of expansion, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.
Nonfarm
payrolls jumped a seasonally adjusted 172,000 for the period, down slightly
from the upwardly revised 179,000 in April and far above the Dow Jones
consensus estimate for 80,000. The unemployment rate held steady at 4.3%, as
expected.
“This
is a labor market that is stronger than it was last year and is looking pretty
darn solid, despite high energy prices and higher inflation generally,” said
Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC. “There’s no indication that the labor
market needs support.”
Breadth
of job gains improved in May, with multiple sectors seeing solid advances.
Leisure
and hospitality led all sectors with 70,000 jobs, well above the 14,000 per
month average over the past year and a possible reaction to hiring needed for
the World Cup. [My emphasis.]
Local
government added 55,000.
Health
care, which has been the leading sector, contributed 35,000 new hires, about in
line with its average. Social assistance added 12,000.
Average
hourly earnings rose 0.3% for the month and were up 3.4% over the past year,
both in line with the Wall Street consensus.
The
report came against a background of muted expectations as employers have held
their ground in a low-hire, low-fire environment. While job gains have been
largely concentrated in just a few sectors, layoffs also have been moderate,
though some signs are building that artificial intelligence is having an impact
on labor rolls.
In
addition to the strong jobs numbers for May, revisions for prior months also
presented an even better picture. The April tally represented an upward
revision of 64,000, while March got a boost up to 214,000, a gain of 29,000.
Last
summer, President Donald
Trump, angered by weak jobs numbers and high downward revisions, fired the
BLS commissioner and installed William J. Wiatrowski as the acting chief.
“The
hiring recession is over. American firms are hiring again,” said Heather Long,
chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union. “This is a strong jobs report
from every angle.”
More
Nasdaq
falls 4% and suffers worst day since April 2025 as traders flee chip stocks:
Live updates
Updated
Fri, Jun 5 2026 4:23 PM EDT
The iShares Semiconductor ETF dropped
10% for its worst day since March 2020. Shares in Broadcom were nearly 8% lower
after tumbling more than 12% on Thursday. Marvell Technology dropped
more than 16% Friday. Intel and Advanced Micro Devices fell
around 11%.
Micron Technology, the memory
chipmaker that’s been the latest star of the bull market, was down 13% after
dropping 8% on Thursday.
“Investors
had been kind of hovering with their finger over this sell button,” said Mark
Hackett, chief market strategist at Nationwide. “Not necessarily to get out.
But if you’ve owned some of these semiconductor names through the last two
months, you’re very out of whack with your long term positioning goal. You need
to take profits at some point.”
In
another sign of speculation coming out of the market, bitcoin tumbled
below $60,000 for the first time since late 2024.
The
iShares Semiconductor ETF is still up 79% on the year even after the recent
declines. This rout comes as tech investors get ready for the largest IPO ever
in SpaceX next week. Already
set to go public at a valuation of $1.77 trillion, Elon Musk’s space and AI
venture has boosted enthusiasm for the sector, while also stoking concern among
some that its debut could mark some kind of top in what they think is an
investing bubble. Others believe part of this chip and bitcoin decline is investors
making room in their portfolio for the IPO.
“People
looking to get into the SpaceX IPO next week, it’s unlikely they’re going to
use Procter & Gamble funds to fund it,” said Nationwide’s Hackett. “It’s
going to be some of these AI trades, the semis, the momentum names, or at least
tech in general. ... Once the boulder starts rolling down the hill, like we saw
yesterday, you can see fairly disorderly sell-offs.”
Friday’s
tech drop came after the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that nonfarm
payrolls increased by 172,000 in May, well above the 80,000 jobs that
economists polled by Dow Jones had expected to be added. The 10-year yield
jumped above 4.5%, while the 30-year yield advanced above 5%, key levels that
revived concerns about a slowing economy and raising borrowing costs for
companies helping to fuel the AI buildout.
Investors
rotated into healthcare and staples stocks on Friday as they dumped tech
shares. Colgate-Palmolive added
4%, and Coca-Cola was
up more than 3%. Johnson & Johnson was up 2%.
Stock
market today: Live updates
Wall
Street panics as stock markets crash deep into the red despite the excellent
May jobs report
Updated: 22:10, 5
June 2026
Stock
markets crashed on Friday afternoon as big technology companies melted down
after a strong jobs report raised expectations that the Federal Reserve will be
forced to hike interest rates sooner rather than later.
The
benchmark S&P 500 sank 2.6 percent, its biggest one-day decline since the
early days of the Iran war in March, and closed out its first losing week in
the last ten.
But
it was the Nasdaq Composite that really stank, plummeting 4.7 percent, its
worst decline in nearly four years. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed
down 1.3 percent.
Tech
stocks dragged the market lower as companies that had powered record highs over
recent months saw sharp losses: Nvidia fell 5.5 percent, Broadcom dropped
almost 7 percent and Micron Technology slid more than 11 percent.
Stocks
within the S&P 500 were close to evenly split between gainers and losers,
but many of the bigger tech stocks have pricey valuations that tend to have an
outsized influence on the broader market.
The
Fed has been holding interest rates steady as it tries to gauge the ongoing
impact of rising inflation, but investors were still clinging to hope
for a rate cut - at least until today.
'Any
hopes of a Fed rate cut have effectively been eliminated with this morning's
strong jobs report,' wrote Lazard chief market strategist Ronald Temple in a
research note.
In
a sign of the panic on Wall Street, the so-called fear gauge soared by more
than 34 percent to 21 in late-day trading, the biggest one-day gain in two
years.
The
price of Brent crude fell 2.2 percent to $92.97 - it was about $70 per barrel
before the Iran war.
The
surge in oil prices prompted a jump in gasoline prices, which has in turn fueled a
broader rise in inflation as prices for anything being shipped move higher and
threaten to slow economic growth.
A
measure of inflation preferred by the Fed showed that prices rose 3.8 percent
overall in April, the biggest increase in two years.
More
In
other news, Trump’s war on the global poor without a casus belli.
Defense
expert: 'The stupidity of the war has become impossible to ignore'
June
4, 2026
Former
U.S. Army major and former executive officer of the Defense Intelligence Agency
Harrison Mann made it clear that President Donald Trump's war against Iran has
become so stupid that even Republicans are backing away.
It
was reported on Wednesday that Trump had reached
an agreement a month ago but didn't like it being compared to the
previous Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), negotiated, in part, by
President Barack Obama's administration.
Mann
explained that the "so-called sticking point was a demand from before the
war ... When Trump did the surprise attack with Israel in February, what the
U.S. and Iran were discussing was some kind of sanctions relief, which would be
a de facto release of funds in exchange for a freeze on Iran's nuclear
enrichment. And so I think it's, in my mind, a little misleading to say that
this thing that we've known has always been an Iranian demand is a sticking
point. I think really the principal sticking point remains Trump's lack of
interest in pushing for it."
Indeed,
for the past several weeks, reports have revealed that Trump is growing
"bored" with the Iran War.
Mann
fears that Trump is alone in believing the U.S. blockade of the Strait of
Hormuz is working and sustainable in the long term.
"The
Iranians don't believe either. I think they're pretty confident in their
ability to withstand, you know, some loss of oil sales. And they really don't
like the status quo," he said. "It seems like Trump kind of thinks he
basically ended the war and, you know, occasional tit-for-tat strikes can go on
really forever. The Iranians don't want that. They think they've got an
advantage and they want to press it."
Also
on Wednesday, four GOP members of the House of Representatives voted to block
further Iran War, delivering enough votes for the Democrats to reassert
congressional authority over the president.
Mann
thinks that this bill passed as a result of two major reasons.
"One,
the costs of the war, and the ... stupidity of the war have become impossible
to ignore," he said. "We're three months in. You can't pretend
Trump's got a plan. You can't ignore the very visible and tangible economic
effects."
It
isn't merely the gas prices, it's also the cost of fertilizer that has
dramatically increased, all of which is putting pressure on American farmers.
Defense expert:
'The stupidity of the war has become impossible to ignore'
Global Inflation/Stagflation/Recession
Watch.
Given
our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians,
inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
Rising EU inflation clears the way for an ECB
interest rate hike next week
4 June 2026
Energy is the component showing the highest rate in
May, but the most significant acceleration is in the rise of service prices.
Inflation in the Eurozone climbed to 3.2% in May
from 3% in April, driven by price increases in countries like Bulgaria,
Lithuania, and Greece, where the index exceeds 5%, making it easier for the
European Central Bank (ECB) to decide to raise interest rates at its next
monetary policy meeting scheduled for June 11.
The European Consumer Price Index (CPI) has now
increased for four consecutive months and has risen by 1.5 points during this
period, reaching its highest level since September 2023, when the continent was
beginning to recover from the inflationary wave triggered by the invasion of
Ukraine a year earlier.
Energy is the component with the highest rate in
May (10.9% compared to the same month last year, only a tenth higher than in
April), followed by services (3.5%, half a percentage point higher than in
April), food, alcohol, and tobacco (2%), and non-energy industrial goods
(0.9%), as detailed by Eurostat on Tuesday. Services showed the biggest jump in
inflation, which could indicate the price increase typical of Easter or an
initial sign of the impact of rising energy costs.
"The additional increase in overall inflation
and, in particular, in services in May reinforces the need for the ECB to raise
interest rates and suggests that the upside risks to underlying inflation could
be greater than we anticipated. Eurozone general inflation - which had already
risen from 1.9% in February to 3.0% in April - increased to 3.2% in May.
Although it aligns with the consensus forecast, it was slightly higher than
expected since we learned last week that inflation had fallen in Germany (...)
Energy inflation is likely to decrease for the rest of this year, even if crude
oil and natural gas prices do not fall. However, food inflation is likely to
rebound, and underlying inflation could also trend upwards in the coming
months. We have only forecasted two 25 basis points rate hikes by the ECB this
year, but the risks to this forecast seem to be skewed to the upside,"
evaluated the British consultancy Capital Economics on Tuesday.
Carsten Brzeski, Global Head of Macroeconomics at
ING, agrees that this data "strengthens the case" for the ECB to
raise rates next week. "With the Middle East war entering its fourth
month, the energy price shock has become more permanent, although oil prices
are actually lower than many had imagined for a more adverse scenario regarding
the duration of the war. Therefore, there will also be no automatic change in
inflation and growth scenarios at the ECB meeting next week. However, for inflation
in the eurozone, the only way is currently up. It will not be a sharp increase,
but a moderate and gradual one. Although the side effects of higher energy
prices on other prices, such as transportation and food, will be difficult to
avoid, the latest inflation expectations based on surveys have decreased
slightly. Price expectations in both industry and services, as well as the
ECB's own long-term consumer inflation expectations, fell slightly in May (...)
Enough to support our view of only a gradual and limited increase in inflation
in the coming months."
The reason experts are cautious about the expected
evolution of inflation in the coming months is mainly the absence of
substantial fiscal support, as there was four years ago, and the fact that
household savings ratios are much lower than they were then, which could limit
consumption capacity and curb the inflationary spiral.
More
Rising EU inflation clears the way for an ECB interest rate hike next
week
Nobel laureate economist tears into 'sneeringly
bogus' lie behind Trump's new tariff plot
June 4, 2026
Nobel Prize-winning economist turned political
commentator Paul Krugman had a scathing review of
President Donald Trump's latest attempt to impose sweeping global tariffs.
Trump has already lost multiple court battles over
his tariffs. He first tried to enact a worldwide "reciprocal" import
tax scheme under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), only
for the Supreme Court to invalidate this. He then pushed a 10 percent global
tariff under a different law, only for the Court of International Trade
to rule that illegal too.
Now, he's trying again, imposing tariffs on 60 countries under Section 301 "Relief from Unfair Trade Practices"
law, asserting that several of America's closest trading partners, including
Canada, the U.K., the European Union, and Japan, are complicit in slave labor
practices.
This is absurd, wrote Krugman, who has extensively torn apart Trump's other tariff schemes previously.
"Everyone, and I mean everyone, understands
that the alleged justification for these tariffs is a lie," wrote Krugman.
"There is absolutely no reason to believe that the EU is less diligent
about opposing the use of slave labor than the US. For that matter, there is no
reason to believe that Trump and his minions have any particular objection to
slave labor. This is nothing but a transparently, one might say sneeringly,
bogus rationale for continuing to flout both US law and international
agreements."
It's particularly bizarre that Trump wants to die
on this hill, Krugman noted, because data make clear that not only are the
tariffs wildly unpopular with voters, they are failing in their basic goal of
increasing domestic manufacturing, with a steady decline in manufacturing
investment ever since he took office.
Unfortunately, he concluded, Trump reversing his
tariff policies "would amount to admitting failure. And if you believe
he’s going to do that, I have a quick, easy victory over Iran you might want to
buy."
Nobel laureate economist tears into 'sneeringly bogus' lie behind
Trump's new tariff plot
Technology
Update.
With events happening
fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section.
Meet
the Brit trying to make battery fires a thing of the past
3 June 2026
Battery fires are one of those subjects that make people sit
up a bit straighter. We’ve all seen the videos: an e-bike battery smoking in a
hallway, an e-scooter going up in flames, or the occasional scary headline
about an electric car fire.
The reality is more balanced than the social media
clips might suggest, especially when it comes to properly engineered electric cars from established manufacturers. But
lithium-ion battery fires are a real and growing concern, particularly around
cheaper, modified or poorly managed batteries in e-bikes and scooters.
That is where Nick Bailey comes in. Bailey is the
founder and CEO of Battery IQ, a British technology company that wants to give
batteries something approaching a safety passport, with live monitoring that
can flag up problems long before they become dangerous.
The company’s first focus is on e-bikes and
e-scooters, where the fire risk has made the most headlines. But Bailey
believes the same thinking could eventually stretch from power tools all the
way up to electric cars, including the batteries removed from older EVs and
moved around the world for second-life energy storage.
“Fundamentally we’re looking at everything from
power tools up to electric vehicles – they’re all things that have caught fire
and that’s our scope to try and solve,” Bailey tells The Independent.
“And I think we’re on that journey. We’re at a specific point of the journey
which we’re having success in a particular area, but I think it will grow over
time.”
Bailey’s route into batteries started with bikes. He
founded Boost during Covid, building technology to convert bicycles to electric
power. He says the idea was to create a UK business that could design and build
its own technology, rather than simply rely on off-the-shelf systems.
“I was an engineer before I was anything else,” he
says. “I went to university in the workshop rather than studying. I started
Boost about five years ago during Covid, which was focused around converting
bikes to electric – a UK business that could create that technology. I’m a fan
of trying to actually build things in the UK and design things in the UK rather
than just relying on the Chinese to do all the design and all the
manufacturing.”
Battery IQ came out of that work. Bailey says he
became concerned that some generic battery safety systems were not doing
everything they should. A project to develop Boost’s own battery management
system was paused when the company found a better system from China, but the
wider issue did not go away.
“At the beginning of last year it became clear that
this battery fire problem wasn’t going away and it was rearing its head in
electric vehicles catching fire as well as scooters and e-bikes,” says Bailey.
New figures from business insurer QBE put the scale
of the problem in context. UK fire brigades attended 1,760 lithium-ion battery
fires in 2025, equivalent to 4.8 a day, and up 147 per cent since 2022. E-bikes
accounted for 520 of those fires in 2025, close to a third of the total.
More
Meet the Brit trying to make battery fires a thing of the past
Finally, after that stock rout, a summer bonus. Time for a G & T.
The Gin and Tonic Is a
Cocktail With a Storied History. Don’t Overlook Scotland’s Connection to the
Classic
The country’s
scientists, doctors, merchants and distillers all played significant roles in
transforming the simple combination that packs a complicated mythology
June 2, 2026 10:23 a.m.
Historians debate who first combined gin and tonic
water—and where. The now-classic cocktail is often tied to the story of British
colonial India: officers and soldiers stationed abroad during the second half
of the 19th century mixed bitter quinine tonics with gin to make the malaria
medicine more drinkable. But Scotland also frequently appears in that history,
for good reason.
Early days for the
ingredients
Long before tonic water existed, Scotland was
closely tied to the European trade routes that shaped early gin culture. Philip Kingscott, the “gin experiential
ambassador” for the distiller traces that relationship back to the 15th
century, when Scotland strengthened commercial and cultural ties with the Low
Countries (present-day Netherlands and Belgium) following the marriage of Mary
of Guelders to King
James II of Scotland in 1449. “The Low Countries are considered to be the
birthplace of the juniper-based spirit genever, the forerunner to gin,”
Kingscott says. Scotland, he explains, maintained centuries-long trade and
cultural relationships with the region. Over time, imported genever became
common in Scottish ports and taverns, and Edinburgh became “a major center in
the trade and eventual production of ‘Dutch gin.’”
By the 18th century, Edinburgh had emerged not only
as a major trading hub, but also as one of Europe’s intellectual capitals
during the Scottish Enlightenment. The city’s
universities attracted students from across Britain and continental Europe, and
physicians and scientists in Scotland were making discoveries that would later
impact mixology.
Two Edinburgh doctors in particular—George Cleghorn and James Lind—helped shape medical understandings of ingredients
now synonymous with the gin and tonic. “George Cleghorn was the first to
scientifically prove the medicinal benefits of cinchona bark [the source of
quinine] in preventing malaria,” Kingscott says, “while Lind conducted the
first-ever medical trial to prove that citrus fruit could be used to combat
scurvy.”
Those discoveries helped establish quinine and
citrus as important parts of Britain’s broader medical and naval culture.
Quinine would eventually become tonic water’s defining ingredient, while citrus
became closely associated with British maritime health practices.
Another Scottish figure, merchant Lachlan Rose of
Leith, would later commercialize preserved lime juice through Rose’s Lime
Cordial, further connecting Scotland to the citrus side of the drink’s flavor
profile.
Still, the gin and tonic as we know it could not
exist until another scientific breakthrough arrived: carbonation.
During the late 18th century, European scientists
began experimenting with artificially carbonated water. Swedish chemistry
professor Torbern Bergman and English chemist Joseph Priestley independently
developed methods for infusing water with carbon dioxide during the 1770s. At
the time, carbonated water was not considered recreational so much as
medicinal. Sparkling mineral waters were thought to aid digestion and improve
health, and scientists hoped to recreate them artificially.
German-born entrepreneur Johann Jacob Schweppe
refined the carbonation process in the 1780s and commercialized bottled soda
water in London. Schweppe initially marketed the product as a therapeutic
beverage rather than a cocktail mixer, selling different strengths of
carbonation intended for various digestive ailments.
Meanwhile, quinine was becoming increasingly
important in European medicine. Derived from the bark of the South American
cinchona tree, quinine had long been used to treat fever-related illnesses.
More
Next, the
world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.
World Debt Clocks
(usdebtclock.org)
Exponent
Calculator
Enter
values into any two of the input fields to solve for the third.
This
weekend’ s music diversion. Handel again. Approx. 3 minutes.
May
no rash intruder disturb their soft hours; To form fragrant pillows, arise, oh
ye flow'rs! Ye zephirs, soft-breathing, their slumbers prolong, While
nightingales lull them to sleep with their song.
Handel:
Solomon-Nightingale chorus
Handel:
Solomon-Nightingale chorus
Next,
more on the 432 Park Avenue calamity. Approx. 22 minutes.
They Knew
432 Park Avenue Would Crack Before They Built It
They Knew 432 Park Avenue Would Crack Before They Built It
Finally, the longest battleship hit ever. Approx. 13 minutes.
The 'Tired' British Battleship That Killed
Mussolini's Pride In Six Minutes At Punta Stilo
The 'Tired' British Battleship That Killed Mussolini's Pride In Six Minutes At Punta Stilo
June 6, 1859. Queensland, Australia, is established as a
separate colony from New South Wales, celebrated as Queensland Day
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