WASHINGTON (MaceNews) – The following is Friday’s status check of developments in the U.S. that can influence economic, health and political outcomes.
- Friday night and such shrill warnings from every side. Donald Trump is trashing democracy, says CNN. Governors imposing lockdowns and school closings are trashing democracy, says Fox News. Why doesn’t everyone acknowledge the big news of the week? That’s right, Bitcoin hit a freaking $18,818.10. Democracies come and go but Bitcoin will be forever, right? A so-called Bitcoin “miner,” Riot Blockchain, saw its shares go up 50% – just this week. That deserves an exclamation mark. There must be one around somewhere. What was Bitcoin’s peak? $19,650 Dec. 15, 2017. Getting close.
- On Fox News Friday night, a frenetic fixation with Barack Obama’s new book, with clips of his book promotion interviews to mock. Like on Jimmy Kimmel’s program where he said Navy Seals might be able to get Trump to leave the White House. Is that “going high” while the rest “go low?” The panel of usual talking heads appealed to reason and logic. Doesn’t everyone know the 2016 election was a referendum on “hope?” Someone who never ran for dogcatcher beat Obama. Contributor Erin Perrine said Trump “is not in it for the media.” Trump works for the American people and “he doesn’t care what they think.” That’s why the media is “so angry.” Unfortunately Sean Hannity wasn’t there. Tammy Bruce was standing in. The memoir “A Promised Land,” incidentally, is testing Penguin Random House’s distribution system, selling almost a million copies the first day it was available. CNN’s Fareed Zakaria hopped over to the Washington Post to write in his review that he was somewhat disappointed. Obama “devotes little time in the book to the central political dynamic in his years in office – the rise of an enraged, utterly obstructionist, Manichean opposition to his presidency, and himself personally, that eventually culminated in the election of Donald Trump,” he writes. That Fox’s cadre of evening Trump loyalists are still at it, taking time out from blasting globalist elites trying to impose their totalitarian will on everyone else, to make fun of Obama tells us all how America’s deep fractures are the yawning canyons that are really what’s ready to swallow democracy.
- OK, the obligatory reference to White House doings during the day. There was a rare briefing by Kayleigh McEnany, reassuming her press secretary role, in which she saved her “walkaway” zinger to be a shorthand explanation of what’s going on as Trump hangs in there. It’s apparently all about revenge. “Something that I would note is we just talked a lot about transfer of power in the election, and it’s worth remembering that this president was never given an orderly transition of power. His presidency was never accepted.” She also had a parting shot for CNN’s White House reporter, saying “I don’t call on activists.”
- The almost equally rare presidential appearance in the afternoon, to repeat how he hopes his executive orders are going to dramatically lower prescription drug prices, saw the presiden be explicit. He won. “Big pharma ran millions of dollars of negative advertisements against me during the campaign — which I won, by the way. But, you know, we’ll find that out. Almost 74 million votes.” No one mentions there was someone else in the race. As he left the lectern without answering any questions, again, an impertinent reporter could be heard shouting, “Are you a sore loser?” He may never answer questions again.
- Later in the afternoon, Trump met behind closed doors with two Republican state legislators. Even though McEnany patiently had explained that the president meets all the time with state legislators some suspected there was a connection to an effort to head off the certification of Michigan’s Electoral College votes. Yet, like the 24 court challenges thrown out, lost, settled or withdrawn, if that was the aim, the result was less than might have been hoped for. The two state legislators issued a statement afterward reaffirming, as Pennsylvania law demands, that the state’s Electoral College votes will go to whoever won the popular vote. That person seems to have been – spoiler alert – not Donald Trump.
- Wait, just in, Back to Fox News and anchor Laura Ingraham and guests. They are talking about a breakthrough drug to fight the coronavirus. And it’s hydroxychloroquine. Checking the date. Yes, it’s Nov. 20. Fair and balanced. You decide. And don’t worry, Laura quickly reverted to an evening staple, a blooper clip of Joe Biden gaffes. And criticizing reporter “jackals.”
- Moving along, Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin, on CNBC, seemed surprised he was and is being pilloried for clawing back half a trillion dollars from the Federal Reserve. A mere half trillion might seem a fairly trivial amount to argue about when you have a balance sheet worth more than 14 times as much, $7,243,080,000,000. The bigger story, in fact, was that there was an argument at all, with no one able to remember when the Fed last said anything in opposition to what Treasury was saying as it did in this case. The details were dealt with in Thursday night’s “Status Check” but skipping ahead to the end, Chair Jay Powell Friday agreed not to hold the funds hostage that backstop emergency funding programs. He’ll give it back to Treasury after Dec. 31. Then we’ll see whether markets were taking those emergency programs into account. Mnuchin’s reasoning for ending the programs while the economy is slowing back down under the crush of a pandemic surge made no sense to many observers who know enough to judge as well as to several Fed policymakers like the Dallas Fed’s Robert Kaplan and the Boston Fed’s Charles Evans.
- The 49th White House-related personage to catch the corona virus turned out to be Donald Trump Jr. , another scoop for Bloomberg’s Jennifer Jacobs. That news came only hours after the disclosure that Andy Giuliani, Rudy’s son and a presidential adviser, was also infected.
- And The Wall Street Journal’s Andy Ackerman had a significant story that put Wednesday’s edict that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac need to build their capital base to $280 billion in the larger context of how the FHFA director wants to return the GSEs to private status before Joe Biden takes over.
- Upcoming economic statistics in the week ahead, that includes what will be a different kind of Thanksgiving Day in many households, is all examined by Kevin Kastner in his preview elsewhere on this macenews.com site, complete with a calendar of every data point.
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- Contact this reporter: denny@macenews.com.