Unemployment rose to 4.3% in August, the highest since October 2021, while the participation rate held steady at 62.3% and average weekly hours worked slipped to 34.2. The combination points to a softening labour market. With joblessness now above its two-year average since September 2023, recession risks are clearly mounting.

In a nutshell, the “resilient” U.S. labor market just cracked: weak hiring, negative revisions, rising unemployment, and shrinking hours now signal recession risks are no longer theory but reality.

🤵 The Macro Butler Weekly Digest 🤵

🌐 Borrow, Bomb, Repeat—history’s oldest government playbook, and Europe is about to prove chaos still makes the perfect distraction. 🌐

Read more here: https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/borrow-bomb-repeat

Listen to a summary of The Macro Butler weekly newsletter via podcast on Substack; YouTube; Rumble & TikTok.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/borrow-bomb-repeat-podcast

In this chapter of The Macro Butler Chronicles, our hero teams up with Arigato Investor to uncover the ultimate treasure of the war cycle decade: Gold!

As Bonds, and Cash stumble like fallen warriors, #Gold shines as the undefeated champion—proving once again why every investor needs it in their arsenal.



https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/interview-with-arigato-investor-03092025

As France’s ‘Bay-Roue De Secours’ clings to life support, Japan’s own lame duck finally chose political seppuku—after presiding over electoral wipeouts, fiscal fog, and a trade deal with Donald Copperfield that now hangs in the balance. Investors can look forward to weeks of hand-wringing while waiting to see which new face will recycle the same old script.

Japan’s long-dated bonds are wobbling like a Jenga tower, and with the LDP unable to scrape together a clear majority, investors are basically sitting on their hands until someone new grabs the wheel—meaning the yen, bonds, and equities are in for a bumpy ride.

You don’t need a PhD in Japanese financial sudoku to see it: political chaos is putting fresh pressure on the yen and long bonds, while Japan races France and the UK in the grim contest of who defaults first.

After the collapse of Japan’s lame-duck Ishiba, the next featherless fowl lining up for the chopping block is France’s very own “Bay-Roue De Secours,” a lame duck from Day One. And what’s next on the French menu? Another lame duck prime minister, a farcical election, or “Macro-Leon” finally dropping the democratic pretense altogether by invoking Article 16 to crown himself quasi-emperor—steering France straight into a bitter IMF bailout and a nice, sizzling hot war with Russia.

France’s finances are circling the drain—deficit at 5.8% of GDP, Brussels scolding like a schoolmaster, and Paris responding with the usual patchwork of cuts and taxes (defense, of course, spared). The parties will bicker over pensions and taxing the rich, but without real austerity, debt rockets toward 125% of GDP by 2030. In short: déjà vu, fiscal chaos dressed up as governance.

In any case, the political circus is back—same clowns, new costumes.

As expected, France’s lame duck “Bay-Roue De Secours” finally got tossed out by parliament, clearing the stage for yet another round of political theatre—while the country’s eternal communist trade unions, professional strikers since time immemorial, gear up once again to defend their privileges and shove France deeper into the debt abyss.

Whoever gets the honor of being France’s next lame-duck Prime Minister will inherit a fiscal dumpster fire: the euro area’s fattest deficit, debt piling up at €5,000 a second, and a debt-servicing bill projected to hit €75 billion next year. Bon courage.

France isn’t just flirting with a downgrade from its tame, politically housebroken rating agencies—it’s also inching toward the ultimate humiliation: an IMF bailout. And don’t think Paris will be the only one lining up with a tin cup; the UK and even Germany are staggering down the same debt-ridden path under the steady guidance of Malthusian, authoritarian Keynesians.

While some are just now catching on that government statistics are mostly smoke and mirrors, the Treasury dropped $58 billion in 3-year paper. The auction stopped at a high yield of 3.485% — a sharp drop from 3.669% last month and the lowest since September 2024, back when the Fed “heroically” slashed 50bps after yet another embarrassing jobs revision. This one even stopped through the When-Issued 3.492% by 0.7bps, the biggest through since February 2025, after three straight tailing auctions. Nothing says “confidence” like investors piling in while the data is busy rewriting itself.

The bid-to-cover came in at a flashy 2.726%, up 20bps from August and the strongest since February. But the real showstopper was in the internals: Indirects scooped up a near-record 74.24%, a massive jump from August’s 53.99% and the second-highest on record. Apparently, nothing says “faith in America” quite like foreigners rushing to buy its IOUs.

And with Directs walking away with 17.39%, Dealers were left holding a measly 8.37% — the lowest on record. Imagine that: the so-called “primary dealers,” supposedly the backbone of the Treasury market, reduced to fighting over scraps at their own dinner table.

Overall, this was a blowout auction — easily top three on record — which only proves that consensus still hasn’t grasped the irony: the “once upon a time” risk-free asset isn’t so risk-free anymore when trust in public institutions is circling the drain.

After ‘Bay-Roue De Secours’ inevitably detonated in a confidence vote no one actually had confidence in, ‘Macro-Leon’ dusted off his Rolodex of yes-men and pulled out Sebastien ‘Le Corniaud’. Beyond being a loyal valet to ‘Le Petit Napoléon’, the freshly minted lame duck is also a card-carrying warmonger, best known for cheerleading the illegitimate Dancer on High Heels while shoving the Malthusian agenda straight into the Ukrainian meat grinder.

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/03/11/7502317/

At 39, ‘Le Corniaud’ is the only minister to have served continuously since Macro-Leon took office in 2017. He steps into the premiership after a coalition of far-right and left-wing lawmakers successfully ousted his predecessor.
Despite the political circus, the economy has shown surprising resilience: manufacturing has emerged from a prolonged slump, and growth exceeded expectations in Q2. Still, a Bank of France survey conducted around the latest confidence vote revealed a sharp spike in business uncertainty — eerily reminiscent of the panic that followed Macro-Leon’s dissolution of parliament.