WASHINGTON (MaceNews) – The following is Tuesday’s status check of developments in the U.S. that can influence economic, health and political outcomes.
· Fourteen days until … of course it is, and the wait is getting excruciating for a lot of people. After all, waiting four hours in line waiting to vote, as in Green Bay Tuesday, is a lot to ask. But in some cases elsewhere the wait has been even longer. Is the process of voting so hard that people have to endure a longer wait than at the DMV, a question there’s plenty of time to ponder while standing in line.
· With Joe Biden concentrating on debate prep incumbent Donald Trump had the news spotlight to himself on Tuesday which is usually not a something he considers a big negative. While castigating reporters as “criminal” for not covering his allegations against Biden and son Hunter, Trump is still doing interviews, making appearances and tweeting. One of the interviews, with CBS’s “60 Minutes” got bonus coverage on CNN and news outlets all over the place. A big deal? He cut off the interview after 45 minutes, apparently not a fan of the questions. After 45 minutes under the lights at the White House, patience can wear thin. He then tweeted a blast at Stahl, accusing her of not wearing a mask. Say that again? She, like him, is a COVID survivor. She says she only momentarily took off her mask. Only bored reporters, you might say, would think this is a big story. But now you’ll be sure to watch “60 Minutes” Sunday. Everybody wins.
· So in the same vein of hugely meaningless side shows, the spotlight focuses on U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and the courtroom of the honorable Senior Judge Lewis J. Kaplan. The details of this episode are easy Google bait but it bears mentioning that Department of Justice lawyers were in court asking that the United States of America become the defendant instead of Donald J. Trump. Why? Because when he was denying he raped a woman 30 years ago he was acting in his official capacity, protecting his ability to govern. Should the judge agree it will amount to a dismissal of the defamation lawsuit against Trump. Opponent Biden has referred to the case, accusing the president of using the Department of Justice as his private law firm.
· The topic of the defamation case is unlikely to come up at the Sinclair Broadcasting Town Hall Wednesday afternoon. The president in the past has tweet-praised the Sinclair network of 294 TV stations as second only to the Fox network in its excellence. Many Sinclair staff don’t share the parent company’s political leanings. The moderator will be a Fox alumnus Eric Bolling and the questions will come from screened participants. The following night, the Presidential Debate may be a different kind of venue. The initial two-minute statements will be mike controlled but the succeeding 90 seconds discussions will have both mikes open.
· Former RNC Chair Michael Steel had already joined the Trump-tormenting Lincoln Project in August and Tuesday he began showing up in the group’s pro-Biden ads. He says he’ll remain a Republican.
· Speaking of Google, the government’s accusation that it wrongly exercises monopoly power may be the landmark case that changes the tech industry forever or a legal morass that keeps law firms employed for a decade by which time the entire tech landscape will have changed on its own. Stay tuned.
· The pandemic relief drama, of more than passing interest to anyone facing bankruptcy, eviction or afraid their children will be experiencing acute hunger, took a turn Tuesday. In a morning interview White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who is now on the outside of the talks looking in, blamed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as he expressed pessimism about the chance of a deal. By the time of his afternoon interview on CNBC he had become optimistic, still blaming Pelosi but in a slightly more circumspect way. Pelosi’s afternoon interview on Bloomberg’s broadcast outlets was full of optimism and she left the impression that the legislation is being written and except for a temporarily deadlocked staff of the House Appropriations Committee, the language is almost ready to be settled by the weekend. She said she wants the checks out by the date the next rent payment is due, Nov. 1. Despite the certitude of many talking heads, Tuesday night was never a deadline.
· The president, at another MAGA rally, this one in Erie, Pa., again said Tuesday night, “We’re rounding the turn on the pandemic … it’s ending.” In a morning Fox interview, he again called opponent Biden a criminal, someone his attorney general must prosecute. “He’s got to act, and he’s got to act fast.”
· The pandemic itself however keeps becoming a more fearsome rebound threat, with the former FDA Commissioner and Pfizer board member and paid CNBC contributor Scott Gottlieb throwing his substantial credibility behind the prospect that in as soon as a week, the cases that are already increasing in 41 states will begin to skyrocket.
· NBC reported Tuesday night that lawyers tasked by a federal judge to identify migrant families divided by the Trump administration say they have yet to track down 545 children’s parents, most of whom were deported to Central America.
· The New York Times seems determined to unload another Trump tax return bombshell every few days until the election and Tuesday night’s story had big implications but stopped short of evidence of illegality. Trump has a Chinese bank account, the story says, something that does not show up on any financial disclosure forms, masked by corporate listings with the firms involved not clear. A Trump attorney told the Times the account was opened in China to allow payment of local taxes. Trump’s son Don Jr. and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani have falsely accused Biden’s son Hunter of realizing $1.5 billion from a China venture of which no proof has ever been provided.
· And in only the second story here not somehow linked to Trump or the pandemic, the Federal Reserve’s Vice Chair for Supervision Randal Quarles Tuesday sent a chill through the world of money market mutual funds as he told a SIFMA audience of the need to develop a “macroprudential” regulatory framework for non-banks. But for some, his brief comments about the difficulties a central bank faces in developing its own digital currency were more striking. For those who paid no attention to Fed Chair Jay Powell’s Monday comments on the subject at the IMF until the FT did a story on them Tuesday, Quarles left the impression that someday a Federal Reserve digital currency will see the light of day. It will have to be protected against cybercriminals making a few billion vanish overnight, it will have to be as protected by the rule of law as the dollar. The @macenewsmacro Twitter account provided deails. But a U.S. backed stablecoin seems to be inevitable, a tectonic development in the history of currencies – at least China seems to think so.
· Upcoming economic data includes the usual MBA report on mortgage applications at 7a ET, the EIA’s oil stocks report at 10:30a and the latest Fed Beige Book survey of economic conditions across the country at 2p. The morning’s report on housing starts showed a strong increase in single family homes, as Kevin Kastner writes about elsewhere on this macenews.com site. Six Fed policymakers have appearances during the day Tuesday.
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