Yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation that will penalise banks looking to do business with Chinese officials who have helped implement the new national security law in Hong Kong. The legislation, which was passed unanimously, reflects US concern that China has violated its promise to honour the autonomy of the former British colony. Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, said the new law ‘signals the death of the one country, two systems’ system China followed with respect to Hong Kong. She added, ‘The law is a brutal, sweeping crackdown against the people of Hong Kong, intended to destroy the freedoms they were promised’. Under China's ‘one country, two systems’ policy, Hong Kong was promised it would enjoy the rights and freedoms of a semi-autonomous region for 50 years, following the former British colony's return to Chinese rule in 1997.
Today we had June’s Nonfarm Payroll numbers, a day early due to tomorrow’s holiday. The market estimates were just over +3.2m jobs (ranging from a low estimate of 500,000 to a high of 9 million), unemployment rate at 12.5% and participation rate of 61.2% before the figures.
The actual number of jobs added was 4.8 million with the previous month’s figure revised up to 2.7 million. The unemployment rate also fell to 11.1% versus the prior month’s reading of 13.3% and the participation rate rose from last month's 60.8%, to 61.5%.
Finally, there was one shocking news article that caught our eye here at SSC yesterday. It has been reported that Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) has been blacklisted for a six-month period by European safety regulators, banning it from operating in European Union destinations. The reason for the blacklisting was the EU’s concerns about PIA pilots holding fake licenses. The Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority last week suspended 141 pilots at the airline from flying over suspicious licenses.
That is not the worst of it. After a fatal crash in May an investigation found that 262 of over 850 pilots flying in Pakistan had fake qualifications and did not sit qualification exams themselves.