WASHINGTON (MaceNews) – The following is Tuesday’s status check of developments in the U.S. that can influence economic, health and political outcomes:
The conflicted national mood was well represented Tuesday, with the stark warnings from the Republican National Convention speakers the night before of what was described as a choice between “church, work and school versus rioting, looting and vandalism” at the hand of Democrats.
The complicated reality on the ground in Kenosha, Wisconsin, didn’t lend itself to simplistic law and order themes. There the maiming of an unarmed black man by a fusillade of police bullets triggered orderly protests during the day, violence at night and armed civilians helping black storeowners protect their property from rioters. There was also an eloquent plea from the mother of the shooting victim for racial peace and an end to violence. Additional National Guard troops were on hand Tuesday night.
The extravagantly harsh language at the Republican convention was answered by equally harsh assessments of President Trump in a new television spot aired Tuesday by his former fixer, Michael Cohen, saying the president can’t be trusted and worse. Cohen’s forthcoming book written from his jail cell will soon go into great detail.
On another level, President Trump came under renewed criticism for his Sunday announcement that a virus therapeutic, convalescent plasma, could save 35 out of every 100 lives threatened by the disease after a day earlier tweeting that scientists were slow-walking a decision until after the election to hurt his chances. Faced with evidence the implied improvement was more like five cases in a hundred and the test results still very thin FDA Commissioner Steven Hahn had to publicly acknowledge the original White House announcement of an Emergency Use Authorization was flawed. The episode heightened fears that any eventual vaccine will be seen as rushed by political pressure.
The virus U.S. death toll reached 178,326 (John Hopkins tracker) as critics of the president said his convention narrative of bold anti-virus moves was a rewrite of history in which he early on scoffed at the seriousness of the pandemic and did nothing for six weeks after imposing a highly porous halt to Chinese travelers. New cases nationally are showing impressive improvement, though still at high levels. Some states continue to do very poorly. Two of the three worst counties in the country are in Texas. Georgia, California, North Dakota, Mississippi, Missouri and North Carolina well represented on that list as well.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s convention address from Jerusalem and the roof of the David Ben-Gurion hotel broke new ground, enough to prompt an investigation by a Democratic-led House committee to see why the speech did not contravene government rules against mixing politics and the job of chief diplomat – rules Pompeo himself had reiterated for U.S. diplomats around the world. The White House created a category of “personal capacity” to excuse the speech, touting the normalization of the UAE and Israel. No mention made of the week’s second embarrassing U.S. defeat in the U.S. Security Council where 13 members refused for a second time the U.S. demand to extend an arms embargo for Iran.
As the leading edge grows more evident of what is feared to become a tsunami of evictions despite various moratoriums, the regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac put off imposition of a half-percent fee to be imposed on refinancings. For those among the more than 14 million unemployed, refinancings are hard to get and the fee was the least of their concerns.
Ex-Google/Alphabet chief Eric Schmidt told CNBC that freezing out Huawei, threatening to ban TikTok and WeChat and other such U.S. moves encourage the rest of the world to adopt “data sovereignty” and so threatens U.S. technological leadership that has worked in its favor for decades.
Bloomberg reported that despite the Federal Reserve’s massive backup to the nation’s credit supply commercial banks are tightening lending standards at the fastest pace since the financial crisis.
More airlines threaten big-number layoffs in October if there is no new virus relief legislation that provides more money. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi repeated both sides are too far apart to resume negotiations on such a package.
Now Hurricane Laura hits the Gulf Coast early Thursday, at Category 3, capable of a 13-foot high storm surge along the Louisiana and Texas coasts.
Upcoming economic data include the MBA’s weekly mortgage application report at 7a ET Wednesday, durable goods orders at 8:30a and the EIA’s oil stocks report at 10:30a.
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Edited by Denny Gulino (denny@macenews). Content may appear first or exclusively on the Mace News premium service. For real-time email delivery contact tony@macenews.com. Twitter headlines at macenewsmacro.