WASHINGTON (MaceNews) – The following is Wednesday’s status check of developments in the U.S. that can influence economic, health and political outcomes.
- The day before Thanksgiving, the latest economic data suggested the country is fractured economically as well as politically, with hardship increasing at the same exponential pace as virus infections while those lucky enough to have ample resources are dampening, even if inadvertently, the government response.
- From the day’s jobless claims to the comments of top central bank policymakers the disconnect between the American haves versus the expanding ranks of the have-nots is widening to a severe degree, raising the question whether some tipping point is approaching,.
- Meanwhile it’s becoming clear the “scarring” that is being inflicted on the country will be long lasting and deeply wounding regardless how fast the effective vaccine candidates can quiet the source of the pain, the highly infectious virus that keeps accumulating its hundreds of thousands of victims. Currently more than 88,000 are hospitalized and the death toll is exceeding the death-a-minute toll of earlier in the month. The latest day’s count, more than 2,300 dead.
- First, fresh claims for state benefits paid to those whose jobs have been interrupted or eliminated rose for a second week, maintaining a level that would have been considered catastrophic in other circumstances. The fact they were much higher early in the year seems to have somehow anesthetized the societal reaction to the fact nearly 800,000 additional people a week are forced to accept government aid.
- Most striking is the indicator not adequately captured by government or private data reports, the length of the food pantry lines and the time spent there by hungry people, for nearly half of whom it is a new and unwelcome experience. One of the national organizations meeting the challenge, Feeding America, says 50 million Americans are “food insecure,” including one in four children. Whether those numbers are correct they seem to have a lot less impact than the aerial scenes of lines of cars to the horizon of people forced to wait in line for food. These scenes from across the country have become recurring items on the nightly newscasts of the major networks and regular stops on the news wheels of cable.
- The minutes of the Nov. 4-5 Federal Reserve’s FOMC meeting released earlier in the day are marbled with notes of concern about the depth of the economic injury and the lack of government follow-on relief. For instance, “Participants expressed concern that, in the absence of additional fiscal support, lower- and moderate-income households might need to reduce their spending sharply when their savings were exhausted.” If a bunch of jobless people stop spending, so what? Well, the American economy is 70% or so supported by spending. And that bunch, as said above, is 20 million people strong. And this, about people “with ties to small businesses and the hospitality, aviation, and nonresidential construction industries” who are “still seeing very difficult circumstances.” Such expressions of concern by the Fed’s Board members and the presidents of the regional Fed banks seemed mainly directed elsewhere in government, to Congress, whose CARES Act provisions largely expire at the end of the year. “A few participants noted that these trends, if slow to reverse, could exacerbate racial, gender, and other social-economic disparities.” And, “A slow job market recovery would cause particular hardship for those with less educational attainment, less access to childcare or broadband, or greater need for retraining.” Yes, maybe so. Those expressions of concern all serve as reasons to keep the overnight bank rate around zero, a big encouragement for market participants who perhaps are among those who need help the least. Tuesday’s Dow topped 30,000 for the first time, making November the index’s best month since spring. But a surging stock market seems to have a dulling effect on congressional empathy and what pandemic travails reveal themselves both sides hope will pressure the other side to meet their terms. It’s more than gridlock, it’s deadlock, a quagmire, a strangle of civic oxygen, a Thesaurus full of nightmare terms for people losing their homes and apartments and livelihoods and security – right now.
- For sociologists who dislike Donald Trump the pandemic has shown how effectively a leader, in this case the same Donald Trump, can disable to a large extent a nation’s capacity to react to the virus challenge simply by politicizing the wearing of masks early on. For those who love Trump, the president was the one who gave the go-ahead to Operation Warp Speed which is intended to get front-line health workers and the most vulnerable people, in nursing homes and those already hospitalized for non-Covid-related ailments, some crucial protection as soon as next month.
- Still months of further deterioration lie ahead despite progress in developing vaccine candidates and therapeutics, with every new week of layoffs extending the recovery time for a massive slice of the work force and the economy it supports. A small country’s worth of Americans, 20.4 million, are out of work to repeat a horrendous number.
- “The darkest days of the pandemic are probably the six to 10 weeks ahead of us,” Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health told CNN – again Tuesday.
- The usual quick check of Fox News Tuesday night showed the heavy hitters – Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham – are on vacation. So the stand-ins were assailing their boilerplate version of Joe Biden, the straw man who is planning a blanket amnesty for undocumented immigrants, who wants to eliminate police departments, who will cater to China and espouse Socialism and allow the elites to force their hypocritical standards on everyone else. The creativity in finding attack lines that we’ve learned to expect will have to wait until next week.
- Meanwhile President Trump could be heard in a Gettyburg, Pennsylvania hotel ballroom, via telephone, to be telling his applauding Republican audience, “It was a fraud.” The setting was an unofficial review of the voting process from the Republican point of view. Rudy Giuliani showed up to repeat his talking points, despite someone else on the Trump legal team testing positive. There were what they called at least temporary legal victories during the day in Pennsylvania and Nevada.
- Biden made no new Cabinet announcements, like that of Janet Yellen for Treasury secretary, and confined his public remarks to urge a disciplined safe Thanksgiving, advice being ignored by millions. “I know how hard it is to forgo family traditions,” he said, “but it is so very important,” The country “is in the middle of a dramatic spike in cases. … That is the plain and simple truth, and I believe you deserve to always hear the truth from your president.”
- Oh yes, the president pardoned Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn as only Monday he was rumored to be about to do. There were no references to why the president fired him to begin with after 22 days as National Security Adviser. Flynn would rather have been exonerated but there was no complaint.
- Upcoming economic data is nonexistent on Thanksgiving, but there was an avalanche of it Tuesday, from the jobless claims report to an unrevised third quarter GDP, durable goods orders, new home sales, the University of Michigan sentiment survey and more. Kevin Kastner reviews the big picture elsewhere on this Mace News site.