WASHINGTON (MaceNews) – The following is Wednesday’s status check of developments in the U.S. that can influence economic, health and political outcomes.
· Gee, stocks tanked. The Dow down 943 points. You mean there’s no stimulus package from Washington? Who knew? There’s a surge in coronavirus cases now, in the fall? Why didn’t somebody say something? But you did know, didn’t you. Which is why your firm was well positioned for all this. So why didn’t you warn your retail customers? And this virus thing? Every day a fresh video that’s gone viral. Like the lady on the Spirit Airlines flight to Puerto Rico who went berserk when told to wear her mask the right way. And Wednesday afternoon in Phoenix, still another MAGA rally. If this virus thing was so serious, the White House advance team wouldn’t keep organizing these crowds who mostly ignore masks and distancing, right?
· Joe Biden ahead by 53% to 42% in Wisconsin. These polls are reliable? Bullhead, Arizona, the MAGA rally before Phoenix Wednesday. The Trump crowds are large, and look awfully enthusiastic. Okay, a bunch of seniors got left out in the cold Tuesday night after that Omaha MAGA rally. Hours later they’re packed into buses. “He get’s his photo op and then he gets out,” Biden said Wednesday. When you’re doing three rallies a day is it that surprising there’s a glitch or two?
· Another “gotcha.” The Jared Kushner recording from months ago, bragging to Bob Woodward, “It was almost like Trump getting the country back from the doctors.” Trump is back in control. Those doctors, always fixated so narrowly on saving lives.
· “One thing you don’t want to do is take away Americans’ free speech,” said Eric Trump on the Laura Ingraham program over on Fox. And she plays a clip of Tony Fauci praising Australia, and “some Asian countries” in comparison to the U.S. still “on a day to day basis, getting worse and worse.” Was she warning Americans to be more like Australians? Of course not. She and another lockdown-hating doctor were warning Americans how Fauci and his ilk want to destroy your freedoms, like in Australia.
· Brett Giroir, the Task Force testing chief, Wednesday conceding that virus cases are growing faster than testing, contradicting the president that the only reason there are so many U.S. cases is that there is so much testing, when testing is still seen by some experts as millions a day short of where it should be. Coupled with haphazard contact tracing … . A broken record.
· Over on CNN, Don Lemon Wednesday night doing his “tsk, tsk” about Trump’s behavior that never changes, his disregard of the doctors, his seeming disregard of every safety protocol. And so it goes, Groundhog Day. Again and again. Or does it just seem that way? Because the real world doesn’t stand still. It evolves second by second and only seems to lurch spasmodically from time to time. It’s been changing. We just didn’t notice the small changes until they added up. Yet, listening to Karl Rove, also on the Ingraham program, he jumps ahead to how Biden will turn off the oil industry “from day one.” Not by 2050. No gradual transition. No reference to methane bubbling up through Arctic waters, as warmer currents turn methane hydrate into a gas that is many times more reflective than carbon dioxide, trapping that heat.
· Back to the V-shaped recovery. If a 35% or so increase in GDP, even if it has to be divided by four for a quarterly read, isn’t V-shaped what is? The Wednesday morning report on the snapback in GDP, whatever it will be, is definitely be an all-time record. Great news, right? Or is it meaningless news when placed in the context of a severely damaged economy that even after that third quarter bounceback is still 40% or so below what it was in the first quarter. Again, where did that stimulus package go? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will be back on Bloomberg broadcast at 12:30p ET Thursday. She’ll blame Senate Republicans and President Trump, who blame her for overreaching, trying for too much. As often observed in this space, the tsunami warning has been sounded, and only some hear it. Evictions, bankruptcies and hunger, not a pretty picture around Thanksgiving.
· For once, President Trump confirmed one of The New York Times stories derived from his tax returns, that he had $270 millions in debt forgiven. “As a developer long ago, and continuing to this day, the politicians ran Chicago into the ground. I was able to make an appropriately great deal with the numerous lenders on a large and very beautiful tower. Doesn’t that make me a smart guy rather than a bad guy?”
· And on Capitol Hill, a Senate committee in action, not on anything like a pandemic relief package, but pulling in the heads of Facebook, Twitter and Alphabet (Google) to defend themselves from charges they are both suppressing conservative news and not suppressing enough of Trump’s tweets. Congress is a long way from changing the landscape for social media and after some shouting, and tongue lashing and harsh criticism from the left and the right, nothing much.
· Upcoming economic data includes the aforementioned GDP report at 8:30a ET, along with the weekly report on new jobless benefit claims. And elsewhere on this macenews.com site, preeminent Federal Reserve reporter Steve Beckner will preview next week’s Federal Open Market Committee meeting.
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