Financial markets don’t usually start to price in possible election outcomes until a month or two before Election Day. Investors are getting an early start this year.
Biden’s performance was so disconcerting that it rapidly changed the election outlook. Trump’s odds of winning rose, but more importantly for markets, the odds of Trump winning and Republicans gaining control of both houses of Congress also rose. Markets care about that because a president can’t implement his full agenda unless a friendly Congress is able to pass the legislation he supports.
Trump also wants to cut the corporate tax rate by another percentage point and extend individual tax cuts that are set to expire at the end of 2025. Such moves would force the Treasury to borrow much more than current forecasts, pushing record-high federal deficits even higher. If Trump did win, and rates rose the way investors seem to expect, it would likely put Trump on wartime footing from Day One. Trump has a long history of bashing the Fed and its chair, Powell, for. During Trump’s first term, he could argue that there was little risk of inflation, so why not lower rates?
It meant “we didn’t get to the see the real Donald Trump,” said “Apprentice in Wonderland” writer Ramin Setoodeh.Collective amnesia seems to have struck the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, especially around the question: Is the president above the law?Five of the six conservative justices who ruled to give the president absolute immunity for “core” presidential duties seem to have made contradictory statements during their Senate confirmation hearings.