WASHINGTON (MaceNews) – The following is Tuesday’s status check of developments in the U.S. that can influence economic, health and political outcomes.
· President-Elect Joe Biden’s slate of foreign policy, national security and domestic security picks who made their formal debut Tuesday did not yet include Janet Yellen, who perhaps will get a solo event at some point. The president-elect’s interview with NBC’s Lester Holt was extremely light on economic news. So dollar sign groupies have to wait for insights into Biden policy on tariffs, China, bank regulation and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – all those great subjects that enliven the days and nights of market participants.
· The rollout of the intended Biden nominees so far was drenched in competence so it was interesting to see how the opposition viewed them. The Fox News evening crew had a special metric by which to apply their measure, which of them had endorsed the Steele dossier. Over on the Fox Business Network anchor Lou Dobbs had not moved ahead that far, still ferreting out the influence of Big Tech – particularly Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg – on the ballot fraud he considered settled vote abuse. A lawyer for something called the Amistad Project has filed lawsuits in six states in conjunction with the Republican National Committee. Guest Hannity stand-in and former congressman Jason Chaffetz broke into programming with the Axios headline, that President Trump has made known he wants to pardon Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. He and his two guests agreed that would be a great idea.
· Speaking of pardons, President Trump seemed to enjoy his Thanksgiving turkey pardoning event in the Rose Garden with a smiling First Lady Melania. Another of those impertinent White House reporters shouted the inevitable question, “Are you going to pardon yourself,” and he ignored that as he has all questions since Election Day. It was the event that preceded the Rose Garden appearance, about a minute’s worth of hailing the Dow breaking 30,000 for the first time, that seemed particularly unusual, not so much because again there was no Q&A, but because of the three-minute warning, the extemporaneous remarks – “that’s a sacred number” – that included thanks to his staff and to the American people, and then the quick departure. The event made an accompanying subhead obligatory for many news outlets, pointing out the president had several times predicted a Depression, a wipeout of 401K accounts and other kinds of financial Armageddons if Biden happened to win.
· Again another prediction by the campaigning president was that after Election Day, the news media would drop the subject of the pandemic, when in fact it has rivaled the political transition as the top story so far this week. Record hospitalizations, a death toll of one a minute and the return of pop-up field hospitals, as on Staten Island, made the impending post-Thanksgiving-surge on top of an existing surge something of a dreaded reality. But that surge won’t become evident until many days after the holiday. Already new cases are averaging 173,000 a day, up by 49% from two weeks ago (NYT Tracker).
· The major network nightly newscasts Tuesday all spent time looking at the long, long lines of people waiting for free food with the total of those “food insecure” skyrocketing into many millions, although different studies have come up with vastly different counts. Worldwide the UN estimates those who are don’t have enough to eat are more than 135 million.
· Upcoming economic statistics include the MBA’s weekly mortgage application count at 7a ET, durable goods orders at 8:39a along with revised 3Q GDP, the advance report on the deficit in goods trade and initial jobless claims, moved ahead a day because of Thanksgiving. New home sales, personal income and consumer sentiment are at 10a.
—
Contact this reporter: denny@macenews.com.
Content may appear first or exclusively on the Mace News premium service. For real-time email delivery contact tony@macenews.com. Twitter headlines @macenewsmacro.
