Bobbing For Horse Apples

Looks like NJ Dem Sen. Bob Menendez is in serious legal trouble with the feds.

The Department of Justice is getting ready to bring corruption charges against Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) over allegedly using his position to help a Democratic donor's business interests in exchange for gifts, CNN reported on Friday.

A formal announcement about the charges is expected to come "within weeks," according to CNN.

Citing anonymous sources who were "briefed on the case," CNN said Attorney General Eric Holder had approved prosecutors' request to charge Menendez.

The donor at the center of the charges, according to CNN, is Salomon Melgen, an ophthalmologist in Florida who's been a friend and supporter of Menendez for years.

As TPM has previously highlighted, Melgen's ties to Menendez have fallen under scrutiny over the past few years. CNN noted that federal investigators have been looking plane trips that Menendez took to the Dominican Republic as Melgen's guest about five years ago. When the investigation of the trips became public in 2013, Menendez reimbursed Melgen $58,000 for the flights, saying it was an "oversight" that he hadn't disclose the trips.

But it seems the Feds still think there's enough there for a criminal case, something pretty rare for a sitting Senator.  It's also important to note than Menendez has single-handedly been the thorn is President Obama's side on loosening up our Cuba policy, something he's said will never happen as long as he's in the Senate.

That may not be much longer.

Another Great Jobs Report

The February jobs numbers are in and it's another strong set of numbers: 295,000 jobs added for the month, and the jobless rate dropping to 5.5%.

Employers added 295,000 workers to their payrolls last month, more than forecast, and the unemployment rate dropped to 5.5 percent, the lowest in almost seven years, figures from the Labor Department showed Friday in Washington. Hourly earnings rose less than forecast.

The report underscores a lingering appetite among companies to boost headcounts as increased purchasing power from cheaper fuel supports consumer spending. While the jobless rate reached Federal Reserve policy makers’ range for what they consider full employment, a missing link continues to be faster wage growth that will be needed to ensure household purchases accelerate.

“These were solid job gains,” said Brian Jones, a senior U.S. economist at Societe Generale in New York, whose forecast for a 280,000 gain was among the closest in the Bloomberg survey. “You’ve got a very strong economy.”

Stocks declined as the report fueled speculation the Fed is moving closer to raising interest rates. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index fell 0.4 percent to 2,093.23 at 10:41 a.m. in New York. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note jumped to 2.24 percent from 2.12 percent late on Thursday.

The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for a 235,000 increase in employment. Estimates in the Bloomberg survey ranged from 150,000 to 370,000.

The jobless rate was projected to drop to 5.6 percent from January’s 5.7 percent.

The problem at this point is that hourly wages are continuing to stagnate.  The other issue: the numbers are looking like there may finally be an interest rate hike in the future.

A stronger-than-forecast U.S. payrolls report strengthens the argument for the Federal Reserve to begin raising interest rates in June, after the jobless rate reached the range that officials view as full employment.

The jobs report looks “unambiguously strong” said Neil Dutta, head of U.S. economics at Renaissance Macro Research LLC. “June is still the base case” for rates to rise, he said. “The probability of September is falling rapidly.”

Fed Chair Janet Yellen last week began to prepare investors for an increase this year, without saying that a move was imminent. She signaled in testimony to Congress that the Fed may drop its pledge to be “patient,” which would mean that rates could be raised at any meeting.

That language is more likely to be dropped after Friday’s jobs report, said Aneta Markowska, chief U.S. economist at Societe Generale SA in New York.

So we'll see where things go from here.  THe economy however is getting better, and one has to wonder how much better it would be if Republicans hadn't been blocking jobs bills for the last six year just to hurt President Obama.

StupidiNews!

• Actor Harrison Ford is in stable condition in a California hospital after the vintage WWII plane he was flying had to make an emergency landing at a Venice golf course.
• A train carrying thousands of barrels of crude oil derailed and caught fire in rural Illinois near the Mississippi River, the third oil train derailment incident in three weeks in the US.
• Central Kentucky is digging out from as much as 23 inches of snow after a storm blew through the Ohio Valley and Mid-Atlantic, causing a Delta flight at LaGuardia to slide off the runway.
• Bank of America and Merrill Lynch are being sued by two former trainees who claim the bank never paid them for 10-hour a day overtime in a $5 million class action suit.
• Microsoft is admitting that Windows operating systems have been vulnerable to the so-called FREAK bug for more than a decade, meaning encrypted web traffic on secure servers is visible.