The Political Page, T+209 -- August 17, 2017 -- Huge Drop In First Time Unemployment Claims -- Making America Great Again

Disbanding the president's "strategy" and "economic" councils. Catching a bit of CNBC this morning suggests that disbanding the councils may have been the smartest thing Trump ever did. LOL. A lot of mainstream America saw 20 "fat cats" sitting around the table talking to the president about cutting their taxes. Most of the CEOs seemed to have nothing in common with Trump except making money: they seemed to disagree with him on immigration, climate change, healthcare, trade with China, etc. This now leaves Trump listening to his "own" people and not getting advice from social liberals, like Tim Cook, et al. Big winner? Bannon? I don't know, but the question is being raised.

Cheap money. Speaking of Tim Cook -- Apple just set a record borrowing cheap money -- link here.  Data points:

• joins Tesla and Amazon in borrowing cheap money this week
• called a "maple bond" deal; its first foray into the Canadian market
• $1.9 billion (US dollar); C$2.5 billion; 7-year; 2.513%; 80 basis points above Canadian govt's 7-year bond
• proceeds will be used mainly to fund the company's shareholder return program (dividends and stock buybacks)

Jobs: the jobs data posted yesterday was in error. Weekly jobs data will be posted today. A comment to that post would be lost so I've re-posted that but it will show coming from me: it did not. It came from a reader. Jobs report:

• last week's number unrevised, at 244,000
• this week, a huge drop: down 12,000 to 232,000

Deplorables: word on the street -- "if deplorables no longer shop at Wal-Mart, it won't matter." This follows reports that the Wal-Mart CEO is really, really angry with President Trump. Wal-Mart shares down over 2% in pre-market trading and pulling the overall market down.