See: Trump's October $urpri$e
"Dow slides more than 900 points as rising coronavirus counts threaten recovery" by Hamza Shaban Washington Post, October 28, 2020
US and global markets shuddered Wednesday as an alarming rise in coronavirus infections rattled investors and threatened a fledgling economic recovery.
The Dow Jones industrial average skidded 943 points, or 3.4 percent, to close at 26,519.95, extending a turbulent week of selling that sent the blue-chip index deeper into negative territory for the month. The S&P 500 tumbled more than 119 points, or 3.5 percent, to end at 3,271.03, and the Nasdaq 100 gave up 426 points, or 3.7 percent, to settle at 11,004.87.
European markets staggered, too, as France and Germany signaled plans to implement new social restrictions to contain a surge of COVID-19 cases. Investors have signaled increasing concern as the pandemic enters this newest phase, which coincides with flu season. The rolling seven-day average of new daily case counts in the United States hit a record 70,000 on Tuesday, and coronavirus-related hospitalizations shot up nearly 10 percent in the last week. Another 73,627 cases were reported in the United States on Tuesday.
Well, the CDC isn't going to record flu cases this year as they and the pre$$ continue to misreport and distort the situation with their agenda-pushing casedemic scam.
The rising surge combined with the drop in stocks sure is coincidence as the election is days away, and this damn thing is reading more like a Great Re$et script every damn day.
''Although statistically the start of one of the strongest periods for markets, COVID-19 once again flips the narrative,'' said Jamie Cox, managing partner for Harris Financial Group. ''The country is under significant stress, and the markets continue to reflect that reality. Thankfully, November has the potential to settle some big, outstanding issues.''
The pre$$ "reality" is the most unreal thing you can imagine!
Failed efforts to advance a coronavirus aid package also weighed on investors. Though House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested last week the possibility of a breakthrough on an estimated $2 trillion deal, the Republican-controlled Senate has since adjourned until Nov. 9. The recess ensured that a deal to pump hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy, with aid delivered to struggling households and floundering small businesses, would not arrive before the election.
Uncertainty over the timing of coronavirus relief is further complicated by the election, which may change the power dynamics in Washington.
Heavy stock market losses connected to the virus are also muddling Trump’s closing argument to voters. He has often linked Wall Street’s performance to his own leadership and has framed an economic comeback as central to his reelection, but worries of a prolonged downturn reflected in retreating stock prices challenge the president’s message to the electorate.
Can there be any doubt that this fake virus is a political weapon and nothing more?
Rising case numbers and hospitalizations have prompted fears not just tied to public health but of the follow-on economic repercussions if local governments are compelled to reinstitute business closures and stay-at-home measures. During the spring, 42 US states and territories issued mandatory orders restricting movement, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, affecting 73 percent of all the counties in the country.
After the election, they will be locking down hard.
Entire segments of the economy have been battered as people curtail travel and leisure spending, and many have restricted their day-to-day routines to protect themselves and others from infection. Hotels and airlines have absorbed heavy losses. Boeing, the aerospace giant, said Wednesday that it will cut an additional 7,000 jobs by the end of the year to cope with weak demand in air travel and the ongoing fallout from the 737 Max jet crisis. Share prices of cruise lines including Royal Caribbean and Carnival have been drastically cut from the start of the year and have not recovered. Oil prices also sank as fewer Americans drive their cars.
Other companies have emerged as clear ''winners,'' owing to their technology offerings that helped people adapt to pandemic conditions and to surging consumer demand. Shares of Zoom, the online communications company, have increased by seven times their value from the beginning of the year; Peloton, the maker of a high-end exercise bike, has swelled more than four times its January value.
In the coming days, investors will parse financial results from the largest companies in technology, including Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Alphabet, which report earnings on Thursday, and will offer Wall Street the latest indication of how their businesses have fared during the pandemic. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
I didn't see any of those earnings reports in today's Globe.
The tech giants fueled much of the market’s relentless growth this summer. As households and businesses transitioned to extended periods of remote work and school, the mega-platforms further entrenched their positions, while smaller rivals stumbled. Strong earnings from big tech companies could highlight their resilience to the turbulence unleashed by the virus, but a weaker performance might underscore the fragility of the economic recovery and the uncertainty facing even the most well-positioned US businesses.....
A COVID cui bono?
Related:
"
The U.S. economy grew at a record 33.1% annual rate in the July-September quarter but has yet to fully rebound from its plunge in the first half of the year -- and the recovery is slowing as coronavirus cases surge and government aid dries up. The Commerce Department's estimate Thursday of third-quarter growth showed that the nation has regained only about two-thirds of the output that was lost early this year when the eruption of the virus closed businesses, threw tens of millions out of work and caused the deepest recession since the Great Depression. The
economy is now weakening again and facing renewed threats. Confirmed
viral cases are surging. Hiring has sagged. Federal stimulus has run out with no further federal aid in sight this year. Gregory Daco, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, noted in a research note that "the strong GDP performance gives a
false impression of the
economy's true health." The latest GDP reading is the last major economic report before Election Day, after a campaign that President Donald Trump has sought to build around his economic record before the pandemic hit.
Trump has drawn generally solid public support for his handling of the economy. On Thursday, the government also reported that the number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits fell slightly last week to 751,000. That was the fewest weekly applications since March, but the level remains historically high
and indicates that the
viral pandem
ic is still
forcing many
employers to
cut jobs. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, said, "Many of the
jobs in retailing, leisure and airlines have been
permanently lost," he said, "and those folks will have to find different work, and that will take time." Overhanging the economy now are growing uncertainty and worry
as a resurgence of the virus raises the
prospect of new lockdowns and threatens the economy, especially without more federal help. That fear has burst into the open this week across global financial markets. On Wednesday, U.S. stock averages tumbled roughly 3.5%,
with the Dow Jones Industrial Average shedding 943 points five days from Election Day....."
Do I even have to type it?
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
"New unemployment claims dip slightly as economic strains persist; 787,000 Americans filed for new claims last week, the Labor Department said" by Eli Rosenberg, Washington Post Oct. 22, 2020
Another 787,000 people filed new unemployment claims last week, according to data released Thursday from the Department of Labor, as the number remains stubbornly high more than six months into the pandemic.
The data is being watched closely with the presidential election less than two weeks away. Economists say they have been concerned by the continued high level of new unemployment claims so far into the pandemic, saying that these layoffs are more likely to be permanent than those that occurred early in the crisis.
The length and severity of the crisis can be measured in the growing number of people who have been on unemployment insurance for more than 26 weeks.
“The ranks of people applying for extended unemployment are starting to make it look like a traditional recession," said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton. “This leaves scars in the labor force, is demoralizing and increases health risks for workers. … We’re not calling people back fast enough at a time that we know many households are running on fumes, unable to pay for food for the week and rent,” and the new rise in coronavirus cases remains another threat to the recovery.
The weekly number of new initial claims, considered a bellwether for the health of the labor market, has remained above the pre-pandemic record of 695,000 for more than 30 weeks.
Still there have been a few encouraging signs, but it’s not enough to get us out of what remains a very deep hole, Swonk said. “It bolsters the case for stimulus and aid, now," she said. "I feel like a broken record.”
So do I, and so is the Globe.
House Democrats, Senate Republicans and the White House continue to wrangle over a package of financial stimulus that would boost weekly unemployment checks once again.....
PFFFFT!
"Dow plunges 650 points as coronavirus cases flare up, stimulus hopes fade" by Taylor Telford and Hamza Shaban Washington Post, October 26, 2020
US markets slumped Monday as investors grappled with uncertainty about economic stimulus negotiations and soaring coronavirus cases around the country.
The sell-off erased all of the blue-chip index’s gains for October.
The United States hit a record high in new coronavirus cases Friday, with more than 83,700 reported, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The resurgence is compounding volatility in the countdown to the presidential election, said Craig Erlam, an analyst with OANDA.
''Financial markets are getting a reality check, as investors come to terms with the failure of Congress to agree to a pre-election stimulus package and surging covid-19 cases,'' Erlam wrote in commentary Monday. ''Just over a week to go until the US election, it was always likely we could see a little more risk aversion this week given the level of uncertainty.''
It’s likely to be an eventful week on Wall Street as investors parse central bank decisions from Canada, Japan, and Europe, third-quarter gross domestic product data from the US Commerce Department, and financial results from the biggest names in tech, including Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Alphabet.
Investors have been closely tracking negotiations over a new round of emergency coronavirus relief, which would pump hundreds of billions of dollars into the US economy. Last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, signaled optimism that prolonged talks with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin would yield progress. Each day’s updates on the status of a roughly $2 trillion package coincided with ups and downs in the markets, as investors tried to divine the chances for a deal.
Are you sick of reading lies yet?
On Monday, Pelosi and Mnuchin failed to reach a deal during a phone call. Last Friday, Mnuchin offered a downbeat assessment of the talks, noting that ''significant differences'' remain between the two sides. Pelosi had set an earlier, informal deadline to give Congress enough time to pass the legislation before Election Day, but that timetable is now seen as less likely.
Sick of getting jerked around, too?
''The COVID-19 situation is worrying to investors because they are looking across the pond to Europe, where many countries are increasing stringency measures and implementing a variety of targeted lockdowns, and wondering if that is the future for the US as well,'' said Kristina Hooper, chief global market strategist at Invesco. ''This suggests fiscal stimulus is needed now more than ever, but it looks like it is not forthcoming any time soon. Add to that concerns about a contested election and you have a recipe for market gyrations and sell-offs.''
With the presidential election on Tuesday, former vice president Joe Biden leads President Trump by 9 percentage points nationally, 52 percent to 43 percent, according to an average of national polls since Oct. 12.
The market slide also coincides with another COVID-19 outbreak at the highest levels of US government, infecting at least five aides or advisers to Vice President Mike Pence, who leads the White House’s coronavirus task force.
''Ultimately, until the underlying health care issue truly begins to resolve, we should expect a cloud to continue hang over the global economic outlook and the markets to continue their choppy path,'' said Nicole Tanenbaum, partner and chief investment strategist, at Chequers Financial Management.
Oil prices sank in response to the rising infections around the globe, which are starting to cause the reinstatement of movement restrictions in some places.....
What about all that Fed $$$ that was supposed to get the economy cooking?
"The Fed’s $4 Trillion Lifeline Never Materialized. Here’s Why" by Jeanna Smialek New York Times, October 21, 2020
WASHINGTON — As companies furloughed millions of workers and stock prices plunged through late March, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin offered a glimmer of hope: The government was about to step in with a $4 trillion bazooka.
The scope of that promise hinged on the Federal Reserve. The relief package winding through Congress at the time included a $454 billion pot of money earmarked for the Treasury to back Fed loan programs. Every one of those dollars could, in theory, be turned into as much as $10 in loans. Emergency powers would allow the central bank to create the money for lending; it just required that the Treasury insure against losses.
It was a shock-and-awe moment when lawmakers gave the package a thumbs-up, yet in the months since, the planned punch has not materialized.
The Treasury has allocated $195 billion to back Fed lending programs, less than half of the allotted sum. The programs supported by that insurance have made just $20 billion in loans, far less than the suggested trillions.
The programs have partly fallen victim to their own success: Markets calmed as the Fed vowed to intervene, making the facilities less necessary as credit began to flow again. They have also been undercut by Mnuchin’s fear of taking credit losses, limiting the risk the government was willing to take and excluding some would-be borrowers, and they have been restrained by reticence at the central bank, which has extended its authorities into new markets, including some — like midsize business lending — that its powers are poorly designed to serve. The Fed has pushed the boundaries on its traditional role as a lender of last resort but not far enough to hand out the sort of loans some in Congress had envisioned.
Lawmakers, President Trump, and administration officials are now clamoring to repurpose the unused funds, an effort that has taken on more urgency as the economic recovery slows and the chances of another fiscal package remain unclear. The various programs are set to expire Dec. 31 unless Mnuchin and Jerome Powell, the Fed chair, extend them.
The Fed can lend to private entities to keep markets functioning in times of stress, and in the early days of the crisis it rolled out a far-reaching set of programs meant to soothe panicked investors, but the Fed’s vast power comes with strings attached. Treasury must approve of any lending programs it wants to set up. The programs must lend to solvent entities and be broad-based, rather than targeting one or two individual firms. If the borrowers are risky, the Fed requires insurance from either the private sector or the Treasury Department.
Early in the crisis, the Treasury used existing money to back market-focused stabilization programs, but that funding source was finite, and as Mnuchin negotiated with Congress, he pushed for money to back a broader spate of Fed lending efforts.
The central bank itself made a major announcement March 23, as the package was being negotiated. It said it was making plans to funnel money into a wide array of desperate hands, not just into Wall Street’s plumbing. Officials would set up an effort to lend to small and medium-size businesses, the Fed said, and another that would keep corporate bonds flowing. It would go on to expand that program to include some recently downgraded bonds, so-called fallen angels, and to add a bond-buying program for state and local governments.
Meaning STATE and LOCAL GOVERNMENTS are being BRIBED by the money-printing Fed to carry out the COVID $CAM and the GREAT RE$ET!
Congress allocated $454 billion in support of the programs as part of the economic relief package signed into law March 27. When the Congressional Budget Office estimated the budget effects of that funding, it did not count the cost toward the federal deficit, since borrowers would repay on the Fed’s loans, and fees and earnings should offset losses.
Mnuchin and congressional leaders did not settle on that sum for a very precise economic reason, a senior Treasury official said, but they knew conditions were bad and wanted to go big. Overdoing it would cost nothing, and the size of the pot allowed Mnuchin to say that the partners could pump “up to $4 trillion” into the economy.
Overdoing it costs nothing except the value of the money declining as they print away!
It was like nuclear deterrence for financial markets: Promise that the government had enough liquidity-blasting superpower to conquer any threat, and people would stop running for safer places to put their money. Crisis averted, there would be no need to actually use the ammunition.
Still, the huge dollar figure stoked hopes among lawmakers and would-be loan recipients — ones that have been disappointed.
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Related:
I believe the proper term is LOOTING, and never mind the deficit:
"US budget deficit hit $3.1 trillion amid virus spending surge" by Alan Rappeport New York Times, October 16, 2020
WASHINGTON — The shortfall underscores the long-term economic challenge facing the United States as it tries to emerge from the sharpest downturn since the Great Depression. Interest rates are low — meaning it costs less for the government to borrow money — but the ballooning deficit is already complicating policy choices as Republicans resist another large stimulus package, citing concerns about the US debt burden.
According to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the nation’s debt now surpassed the size of the economy, amounting to 102 percent of gross domestic product. “It is hard to believe we now owe a full year’s worth of output,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the committee. “We weren’t supposed to cross this threshold for over a decade, but here we are.”
We are f**ked no matter who is appointed, 'er, selected, 'er, elected president.
MacGuineas noted that the last time America’s debt exceeded the size of the economy was at the end of World War II, and that it took years of balanced budgets to bring it down. The annual deficit was the largest since 2009, when the United States recorded a $1.4 trillion shortfall during the financial crisis.
In a statement accompanying the annual budget report, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin highlighted the extraordinary level of money that has been pumped into the economy this year to combat the recession and prop up the economy. Russell T. Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said that as the recovery continued, the fiscal picture would improve as companies hired back workers and people began spending more money.
Even the most ardent deficit hawks agreed that the virus, which shut down large swaths of the economy and tossed millions out of work, necessitated a huge fiscal response, but with Election Day approaching, Republican lawmakers have shown little appetite for more spending, despite the fact that millions remain unemployed and previous aid has largely dried up.....
Yeah, it's the Republicans fault even though the disingenuous Pelosi was negotiating in bad faith for political reasons.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
The whole thing has been a "game-changer":
After the election it will be "time to sell prized possessions on Amazon, Ebay, and other sites."
Well, maybe not Ebay.
Not that it matters, but according to Helmut Norpoth, the electoral map should look like this unless the fix is in:
"Biden knows it’s the economy (not taxes), stupid; The Democratic challenger would repeal Trump’s tax breaks for corporations and the rich and plow trillions of dollars into pandemic relief and other programs" by Larry Edelman Globe Columnist, October 18, 2020
“Read my lips: No new taxes” vs. “It’s the economy, stupid.”
Those defining catchphrases from campaigns past pretty much sum up where Donald Trump and Joe Biden stand today when it comes taxes, the key planks of their economic platforms.
After making good on a promise to slash taxes in his first term, the president is offering up mostly modest tweaks this time around, and with many voters focused on the pandemic and the possibility of a contested election, a tax-and-spend pledge isn’t quite the same hurdle for a Democrat to overcome as it has been in past elections. That may be one reason Biden is leading Trump by 10 percentage points or more in many national polls.
Even on Wall Street, where the threat of higher taxes usually rattles investors, things are different this year. A fair number of investors and economists are saying a Biden victory wouldn’t necessarily be a disaster for businesses and the markets. In fact, it could be a plus, with the lift from aggressive spending to support the recovery offsetting the drag of new taxes — increases that, in any event, would likely be put on hold until the economy is in better shape.
That is why Trump is out on the campaign trail.
“The stock market has generally improved and moved higher at the same time that the polls have widened in Biden’s favor,” said Luke Tilley, chief economist at Wilmington Trust.
That had more to do with prospects for fiscal stimulus coming from Congress, Tilley said, but “it’s clear to me that there is a sentiment in the market trying to get more comfortable with a Biden presidency and his tax and spending policies.”
“Trying to get more comfortable.” That’s the key phrase.
Business leaders and millionaires don’t welcome the higher taxes a Biden administration may bring. Rather, they are looking past taxes to assess potential positive outcomes from the “blue wave” — a Biden win combined with the Democrats retaking the Senate.
So what’s on the line for individual and corporate taxpayers on Nov. 3? A lot.
To undo the core of the Republican income tax cuts, a President Biden would need Democrats to retake the Senate, extending the blue wave that gave them the House in the 2018 midterms. A divided Congress would make passing any substantial legislation nearly impossible.
Once considered a long shot, the odds of Democrats winning the Senate are now about 80 percent, according to the latest forecast by FiveThirtyEight, while Biden’s average margin of victory in national polls is 52 percent to 42 percent.
Didn't they get it wrong last time?
If Biden and Senate Democrats come out on top, the spending floodgates will likely open, even if tax hikes don’t kick in until the economy is strong enough to absorb them.
Among Biden’s big initiatives are $2 trillion for climate and clean energy initiatives, $775 billion for child care, and $700 billion for infrastructure projects. Such plans may be unrealistic in light of the news last week that the federal budget deficit tripled to $3.1 trillion in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30.
Joe is big on the Great Re$et.
As Goldman Sachs chief economist Jan Hatzius put it in a note this month to clients: A Democratic sweep “would likely result in substantially easier US fiscal policy, a reduced risk of renewed trade escalation, and a firmer global growth outlook.”
In other words, the blue wave wouldn’t be a disaster.....
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Not until trade talks begin anyway:
"A Biden Win Could Renew a Democratic Split on Trade" by Ana Swanson New York Times Oct. 28, 2020
WASHINGTON — Joseph R. Biden’s presidential campaign has unified the Democratic Party around a shared goal of ousting President Trump from office, but as the campaign nears an end, a deep split between progressives and moderate Democrats on trade policy is once again spilling out into the open.
As the Biden transition team begins gearing up to select the people who might staff the administration, the progressive wing of the party is pushing for appointees with deep ties to labor unions and congressional Democrats, and they are battling against appointees that they say would seek to restore a “status quo” on trade, including those with ties to corporate lobbyists, trade associations and Washington think tanks that advocate more typical trade deals.
The split is falling along familiar lines between moderates — who see trade agreements as key to American peace and prosperity — and left-wing Democrats, who blame trade deals for hurting American workers in favor of corporate interests.
The division has dogged the Democratic Party for years. President Bill Clinton and Barack Obama joined with moderate Republicans to try to lock in new trade pacts to the chagrin of labor unions and many Congressional Democrats. For Mr. Obama, that split spilled into a fight over the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a multicountry trade pact that became so politically toxic that Hillary Clinton disavowed it during her 2016 presidential campaign.
The rift helped speed the election of President Trump, who won over some blue-collar workers disaffected with the Democratic Party’s trade record by espousing a populist worldview and vowing to rewrite “job-killing” trade pacts like the North American Free Trade Agreement.
He is doing it again if the Michigan autoworkers are any indication.
The balance of power between progressives and moderates in trade policy will be “a huge issue for the Democrats,” said Simon Lester, an expert in trade policy at the Cato Institute.
“During the campaign, you can kind of gloss over it, you can make statements in vague ways, but at a certain point you have to make decisions about personnel and about policy,” Mr. Lester said.
Mr. Biden has bridged these divisions so far in the campaign by focusing on criticizing Mr. Trump for his costly and erratic trade policy, which he says has alienated allies like Canada and Europe and failed to convince China to make significant economic reforms. Mr. Biden has emphasized broad principles that most Democrats agree on, like working with allies and investing at home to make American businesses more competitive, and he has declined to provide specifics on other policies that might divide his supporters.
It's the same old Democrat boilerplate we are so sick of, and as far as China goes, they have bought and paid for Biden many times over.
In the Oct. 22 debate, Mr. Biden criticized Mr. Trump for embracing “thugs” in North Korea, China and Russia, and he said the president “pokes his finger in the eye of all of our friends, all of our allies. We need to be having the rest of our friends with us, saying to China, ‘These are the rules. You play by them or you’re going to pay the price for not playing by them, economically.’” Mr. Biden said. “That’s the way I will run it.”
He must be demented to say such things!
Some progressive Democrats have worried that Mr. Biden — who voted for NAFTA in 1993 and to pave the way to bring China into the World Trade Organization in 2000 — would put America back on the mainstream trade policy path that Mr. Obama and Mr. Clinton pursued. Many of Mr. Biden’s closest advisers are holdovers from the Obama administration, who, like Mr. Biden, believe deeply in the benefits of global economic integration, but Mr. Biden has also done more than previous Democratic presidents to court the progressive wing of his party, pledging to give both labor unions and environmentalists a larger role in writing future trade rules. His vice-presidential pick, Senator Kamala Harris of California, has also taken a more skeptical stance on trade and was one of the few Senate Democrats to vote against the revised NAFTA agreement because it did not contain provisions on climate change.
“He’s going to, in my opinion, run a very labor-friendly administration,” said Jon Leiber, managing director for the United States at the Eurasia Group.
Bu$ine$$ is betting on him, too.
To help quiet any trade fights within the party, Mr. Biden has promised to first focus on domestic priorities like curbing the coronavirus pandemic, addressing climate change and investing in infrastructure and health care before writing new trade deals, signaling that the blistering pace of trade talks seen under President Trump is likely to slow.
“The thing that they realize politically is that if they want strong unity and purpose on things like Covid, infrastructure and climate, they cannot create a war between the congressional Democrats and the White House,” said Lori Wallach, the director Public Citizen’s trade watch, a progressive who has been cited as a potential trade official in a Biden administration.
Mr. Biden has papered over other difficult divisions within the Democratic Party by declining to state a position. Mr. Biden has released more extensive plans for expanding Buy American programs and proposed tax penalties for companies that send jobs overseas, but on other policy choices, his campaign has been vague. That includes declining to say whether a Biden White House would keep the tariffs Mr. Trump imposed on $360 billion worth of Chinese goods, whether it would proceed with bans on Chinese social media sites like TikTok or WeChat or how it would resolve a standoff that has crippled the World Trade Organization. It’s unclear if a Biden administration would ultimately move to rejoin the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or continue existing trade talks with the United Kingdom and Kenya.
Mr. Biden’s advisers tend to be more unified on China, but there is still a split, people familiar with the conversations say. Some see China as a challenge, but still believe in trying to integrate the country into the global system and work with the Chinese on issues like climate change and nuclear proliferation. Others see a clash between the two systems as more inevitable, and say China’s increasingly authoritarian behavior is likely to preclude much cooperation.
Democrats are unified around some issues — like using new provisions in the revised North American trade agreement to push for labor reforms in Mexico, and updating trade rules to include commitments on climate change, and many Democrats support reforms at the W.T.O. that would pressure China to change its trade practices. The path of Mr. Biden’s trade policy will depend largely on personnel decisions, including who become the Treasury Secretary, the United States Trade Representative and commerce secretary.
One of the most widely mentioned candidates for Treasury Secretary is Lael Brainard, an economist and member of the Federal Reserve’s Board who served as under secretary for international affairs at the Treasury during the Obama administration, but some congressional Democrats have pointed to Ms. Brainard’s reluctance to label countries like China as currency manipulators when she was at the Treasury, and instead are pushing for Sarah Bloom Raskin, a former Fed governor and Treasury official whom they see as more aligned with their views.
For the U.S. trade representative, progressive politicians and trade experts are pushing candidates including Katherine Tai, the chief trade counsel at the House Ways and Means Committee; Michael Wessel, a member of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission; and Tom Perriello, a former congressman from Virginia who is now executive director of Open Society-U. S., a philanthropic group, according to people familiar with the conversations.
Open Society = $oro$!
In a sign of the challenges facing Mr. Biden, those same voices have objected to more mainstream candidates they say could return trade policy to a previous status quo, like Fred Hochberg, the former head of the U.S. Export-Import Bank or Miriam Sapiro, a trade negotiator for the Obama administration who is now at a public relations firm.
The commerce secretary, a position sometimes doled out to wealthy political donors, is also an area where progressives hope to make staffing inroads. The Commerce Department has become increasingly powerful under the Trump administration as it pursued trade cases against other nations, accusing foreign governments of unfairly subsidizing goods sold by American competitors. The department has also levied tariffs on foreign metal and is responsible for imposing sanctions against Chinese companies, including placing several big firms like Huawei on an entity list that prevents them from buying American technology and other components.
Among the names being floated for role of commerce secretary is Rohit Chopra, a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission and an ally of Senator Elizabeth Warren who has pushed the trade commission to crack down on companies that falsely claim their products are American-made.
Some non-trade roles will also play a part in shaping policy, particularly with regard to China. Top officials in the Departments of State and Defense, as well as the National Security Council, could have outsized influence over the direction of relations with China given the growing concerns among both Democrats and Republicans about Beijing’s economic, military and technology ambitions.
So when does the war start?
Whatever happens, bu$ine$$ leader are telling us to accept the outcome with no questions asked:
"Business leaders call for ‘patience and civility’ ahead of US election, tying economic health to democracy" by Anissa Gardizy Globe Correspondent, October 14, 2020
Business leaders are calling on Americans to be patient and civil ahead of the 2020 presidential election, citing the importance of maintaining confidence in democracy during the coronavirus pandemic.
More than 50 executives across the fields of tech, finance, retail, and real estate signed onto a statement released Wednesday by the Leadership Now Project, a group founded by Harvard Business School alumni focused on protecting democracy.
"America has successfully held elections through previous challenges, like the Civil War, World Wars l and ll, and the 1918 flu pandemic ... we can and must do so again,” the group said in the statement. “As business leaders, we know firsthand that the health of America’s economy and markets rests on the founding principle of our democracy: elections where everyone’s vote is counted.”
These guys are fa$ci$ts at heart, in the true$t $en$e of the word.
The statement was backed by big names in business, including LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter, former Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer, and General Assembly chief executive Lisa Lewin. Massachusetts executives on the list include Seth Klarman of Baupost Group, Tricia Glynn of Advent International, Trinidad Grange-Kyner from Tufts Health Plan, and Eric Spindt from Commonwealth Financial Group.
The group emphasized that it could take weeks or more until election results are confirmed because of the number of citizens voting by mail this year. They asked Americans to stay calm, “making it clear that they will refuse to accept any results called too early or based on insufficient data.”
That way they know where and how many mail-in ballots must be forged, 'er, found.
The statement also called on journalists to “avoid calling the election before sufficient data are available,” and asked business leaders to “promote patience and civility among employees, communities, and the American people.”
Too late. They have already called it for Biden if their coverage is any indication.
LinkedIn’s Hoffman wrote that “election results inaccurately or prematurely reported by journalists, elected officials or other leaders would erode faith in American democracy and cause havoc in the business world and beyond.”
Why did 2000 just pop into my head?
Daniella Ballou-Aares, chief executive of the Leadership Now Project, said it is in the best interest of business leaders to protect the legitimacy of the election, adding that “stable, inclusive government leads to greater economic growth.”
“We are in the midst of a pandemic that has caused great hardship for Americans in the form of lost lives and livelihoods,” the group wrote. “We must now come together to ensure that the pandemic does not cause even greater damage by threatening the integrity of our election.”
It's $o rea$$uring that they are looking after the integrity of the election, 'eh?
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