Jobs report chain reaction could char Hill

F RIDAY’S

employment report will be tricky for both the financial markets and the presidential candidates.

Wall Street thinks there were 180,000 new jobs created in August. That would be down sharply from the 255,000 in July, and even lower than the excellent number of jobs created in June.

Another healthy jobs report would be good news for Hillary

Clinton since she’s the beneficiary of the Obama economic legacy — whether good or bad.

But strong job growth would likely clinch a rate hike later this month from the Federal Reserve, which has been itching to raise borrowing costs and has been hinting loudly that it is ready to do so.

A rate hike might also cause nausea in the stock market. If Wall Street gets an upset stomach this close to the election, it’s going to hurl all over Clinton’s chances.

So it’s very tricky.

There’s something key to watch in Friday’s job numbers.

July’s employment report was boosted by wacky seasonal adjustments. You’ll have to decide for yourself whether these seasonal aberrations were naturally occurring or man-made ahead of the election.

How will the seasonal adjustments affect Friday’s number? To know that, you have to look at the figures that came out for August 2015. Last month’s adjustment should be similar, barring any funny business.

A year ago, the Labor Department reported growth before seasonal adjustments of 199,000. During August, the raw, not seasonally adjusted, data almost always show growth. That’s not surprising since teachers go back to work, auto assembly lines start moving again, and businesses that slow down at the end of summer perk up.

But that translated into an increase of only 150,000 jobs after seasonal adjustments. If this year’s seasonal adjustment is a lot different from last year’s, you have to start asking if someone has his thumb on the scale for an election year.

The Fed isn’t going to look very deeply into Friday’s figures. It wants to raise rates. So barring an abomination in the job market in August — or some other catastrophe — rates will probably be going higher later this month.

The investigation of the Democratic presidential hopeful keeps getting messier. But, so far, Wall Street doesn’t seem to care.

Congress now wants to know what secret documents she turned over to her lawyers, who may not be authorized to look at them. Apparently, it’s becoming a big mess because some of the documents were beyond Top Secret.

The House Oversight Committee on Aug. 22 asked FBI Director

James Comey some follow-up questions to his admission in July that Clinton was careless with sensitive documents. Comey, during a July 7 hearing, said more than two but fewer than 10 people without a security clearance had access to Clinton’s server, where secret information was stored. Committee Chairman Jason

Chaffetz (R-Utah) is now asking the FBI to determine if people at Clinton’s law firm, Williams & Connolly, “improperly stored or accessed” the former secretary of state’s records.

Of particular concern, I’m told, is data marked as “Sensitive Compart- mented Information,” a clearance level sometimes called “above Top Secret.”

I’m still waiting for someone on Wall Street to tell me that she or he attended one of those $200,000-plus speeches that Clinton gave.

At that price, I assume Goldman Sachs, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and other Wall Street firms must have invited loads of people to hear the wisdom of Hillary.

Or were these just small lunches with a select few — and the companies were paying so that a potential future president would think nicely of them?

Clinton won’t release her speeches. But I’d like to hear from anyone who was there to prove that the speeches were actually given. Oh, yeah, and I’ll want some evidence to prove your attendance.

Janet Yellen said last Friday in Jackson Hole, Wyo., that the case for raising interest rates has strengthened in recent months. That’s just what I expected.

But the Federal Reserve chairwoman hinted at something else: In the future, the Fed could be looking into a “broader range of asset buys.”

What’s that mean? Wall Street thought the Fed might buy stocks like the Bank of Japan, something it already does. So share prices went sharply higher Friday on Wall Street despite the bad news about the possible rate hike.

As I’ve said before, the Fed is already rigging the stock market through verbal intervention and surrogates who buy stock futures.

If the Fed only expands assets purchases by buying corporate bonds, that will still help rig the stock market by putting more money into companies’ pockets.

I expect Yellen to raise rates in September (unless economic data over the next few weeks are awful) and regret that decision within a few weeks. I don’t know if it’ll be a swoon in the stock market, an increase in the polling numbers for Donald

Trump or new evidence that the already weak economy really can’t stand higher borrowing costs.

But the Fed will — once again -look as though it doesn’t have a game plan to get the economy back on solid footing.