https://twitter.com/teampelosi/status/1318667830733295616?s=21
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And futures up 0.35% in 10 minutes … ???
CNBC headline has been STIMULUS IMMINENT for literally two months. I think the vast vast majority of people think it is still happening in the next couple weeks.
I know some of you guys put it at 0%. I would say more like 10% but the financial sector reporting on the story has been a pure STONKS pump and it has worked.
I think from where we’re sitting 0% and 10% are both equally accurate guesses. We don’t know what the personal dynamics of the negotiation are, we don’t know what is going on in Mitch’s head (seriously if anyone actually understands what his line means I want to hear it), or what the fuck else is going on.
Honestly I expected there to be a deal semi quickly. I thought Trump would badly want a deal, and I thought that after some initial tough guy posturing he’d do what he always does and bend over… and then woe betide Mitch if he stood in the way of a very popular and very necessary bill.
Instead this happened. My level of understanding for how we get here is like 0%. Initially I thought Mark Meadows had spiked it because he’s one of the true believers who didn’t want a deal… but then Mnuchin couldn’t get the deal either.
I think most econ people are pretty puzzled by what the hell is going on right now. I’m very confused why the second deal didn’t turn into a shotgun wedding like the first. It’s not like things got better since March. If anything things are much much worse.
My best guess is for each of them it looks a little like this:
Nancy:
-Doesn’t want to help Trump in the election but also doesn’t want to be appearing to impede a bill.
-She probably correctly thinks that this will be the last large scale Covid stimulus bill. So she needs to get everything she can out of it. She also realizes she is a favorite to have both houses + POTUS very soon.
-As a result there may be some truly non-negotiable items. Money for cities/states would be my guess on what it is.
Mnuchin/Trump:
-Who fucking knows
Mitch:
-Sees the writing on the wall and has shifted into fiscal hawk mode. That way when the Senate is 50/50 or maybe 51/49 R with Biden he can claim he opposed sweeping stimulus under Trump as well. That will cripple the Biden presidency. He probably sees that as a winning strategy from 2010-2016 and is going back to the well.
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Mnuchin wants to keep the stock markets up, and probably personally supports what the Senate wants to do plus a few scraps for the common folks. He’s probably personally willing to cut a deal similar to CARES with Pelosi to get the help for STONKS.
Trump wants whatever he thinks will help him get re-elected, which fluctuates by the hour based on whether he’s got indigestion, mean Nancy called him a mean word, or which aide spoke to him most recently.
The only thing I’d add with Mitch to try to make sense of his strategy is that he recognizes that the dynamic for several Republican senators up for re-election right now is:
- They’re in trouble.
- There are Trump Republican voters who aren’t necessarily voting for all the down ballot races, hence some Republicans running behind Trump.
- There are NeverTrump Republicans voting for Biden and straight GOP the rest of the way.
Too much stimulus hurts #3, but it probably doesn’t make much difference on #2. I think he’s calculated that Dems are turning out no matter what, so pissing off the average folks who pay attention is a non factor. All he cares about is maintaining #3.
I still think McConnell is malfunctioning a bit on this one. He’s usually pretty sharp though, so maybe we’re all missing something and he’s a wizard.
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I think Mitch is playing the long game. Handing Biden the smoking ruins of an economy probably suits him better than even Trump getting re-elected.
Mitch’s game is all about 6-3 SCOTUS, and figure it out from there. Which is a massive advantage spot.
Does it though? Obama crushed on bringing the economy back. If dems sweep and pass a massive stimulus that also pumps up the market will be hugely popular and likely cruise them to crushing in 2022. In that case he would have been way better off passing his own stimulus before hand,
For the smoking ruins economy he needs to maintain control of the senate. If he does that, then biden is definitely fucked but he would have been fucked regardless if a stimulus had passed. I guess he would be a little more fucked, but nothing to write home about.
I’m guessing the 22% of people who don’t want stimulus are all Republicans, and a massive stimulus to poors and blacks might make a lot of them not vote for Senate republicans. There was a reason a bunch of Republican senators don’t want to pass a big bill, a lot of their voters don’t want them too.
They don’t give a shit about the debt obviously, and a stimulus would pump up the market massively, and their corporate donors would absolutely love it, so the only reason left is that a lot of their fiscally conservative voters would be fucking enraged. The vast majority of them don’t need stimulus.
I think it all depended on the market, if the market was tanking they would snap up a huge stimulus deal because then a lot of the fiscally conservatives would be on board like they were in March because their investments and 401ks were suffering, but they’re fine now so fuck poor people.
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People were instantly jerking to the Trump executive order $400 (later $300, then zero). This will be a huge win for Trump because citizens are politically ignorant.
So what happened to all the suffering we were predicting? Like back in march there were stories about miles long food lines etc but we haven’t really heard anything about people suffering economically due to no stimulus. Is it states moratoriums keeping people off the streets?
I really don’t get how the bottom hasn’t fallen out with 10%ish people unemployed and not getting any stimulus for months?
All my friends are relying on family and friends, but I assume most can’t do that.
We’re talking about 15M people being unemployed, but about 7.5M are married and might still have some household income. Say 5M do. Now you’re down to 10M. A lot are probably recent college grads, and some others have enough saved or are side hustling enough to bring some money in.
I have a friend driving 70-80 hours a week on Uber to get by.
So it’s probably only a couple million people really suffering, and they’re going to be overwhelmingly more likely to be poor and minorities.
And that’s why we haven’t really heard anything.
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For a variety of reasons I hesitate to post this but here goes:
We have ventured into the KOP mall a few times. The air turnover is great and we have no issue with getting substantial distancing and masking is enforced.
When we first went in when the stimulus was still in effect there were long lines at the high end fashion stores, especially Louis Vitton. The last time the overall traffic in the mall was lower (on a rainy weekend evening which usually packs the mall). And especially The LV line was short.
Amateur theory but I think a lot of lower middle class and even poors had some extra bucks and splurged and now that is drying up. Moratoriums on evictions probably being abused by some to live free and worry about tomorrow the day after tomorrow.
i acknowledge that judging socioeconomic status by appearance is dicey at best. Combo of ethnicity and dress I guess and making an extrapolation that can certainly be considered a stereotype
I mean for sure a ton of people were being bad with their stimulus money. Me and Curse saw the same thing, poker games online were much better when there was 600+ UE every week, which means people were punting off their UE money on poker.
It’s obviously not smart, but I’m also not going to judge people who have been brutally exploited by the system for wildin’ out when they finally get a taste of what its like to receive a decent paycheck. An amount they deserved this entire time.
If you work 40 hours a week for years and can never afford to buy something nice for yourself, I think its natural to splurge when you finally get that opportunity. Not smart, but natural. Most of these people probably aren’t plugged into politics enough to know it was likely going to end and not be renewed. I know a lot of people who thought it would last until they got their jobs back.
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Here’s a far too polite reply.
We know from things called statistics that people have been spending far less money.
The exciting “Personal Consumption Expenditures by Major Type of Product” reveals clothing was down 28% in Q2 from Q2 2019, and at a level not seen since Q2 2003.
https://apps.bea.gov/iTable/iTable.cfm?reqid=19&step=3&isuri=1&nipa_table_list=65&categories=survey
I’m not picking on you specifically but I hate judgements like this. It reinforces the idea that poor people are poor because of a lack of a character.
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I also bet statistically poor people spent stimulus on bills and food where the middle class paid down debt or played online poker. So let’s stop this narrative that poor people are poor because of bad choices.
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This is literally their job.
I mean my whole post was about them being poor because they don’t get paid enough, and to not judge them when they splurge because they deserve nice things like everyone else.
Just anecdotally I know lots of people in the lower income ranges who spent their stimulus on splurging, but I think they should be able to do that and the fucked up thing is the system that would force them to save every dollar because they would go back to being dead broke soon.
But yeah I probably didn’t frame it in the best way.
The whole poors are poor cuz they buy nice things is just bad faith BS from the right. They’re poor because they get brutally exploited by a fucked up system
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