What I Get
I am just looking forward to the day when I wake up at 4:30 AM Pacific, and don’t have to check the President’s Twitter feed first thing to see how he is manipulating markets that day.
Trump Is Here To Stay
In the first place he is going to try to stay in office, like all authoritarians. Autogolpe is the term of art. But he will likely fail. Even conservative judges are laughing his legal challenges out of court, and even were he to win them all, they still would not tip the balance. Joe Biden won the election.
But the problem is that tens of millions of Americans believe this nonsense. They will not stop believing it. The conspiracy theories regarding Nevada and Pennsylvania will be too numerous to count, and Trump will amplify every one of them, even if they are contradictory. Q is just the beginning.
And speaking of Q, our new QAnon batshit member of Congress is already at it, messing with her colleagues who thought they were the crazy wing of the party.
But back to Trump. Even if he is forced to leave the White House, which is not a given, he is not going away. He will just return to the original plan, which was a branding exercise. The rallies will continue. He will try and start a “news” network, and may be able to raise the money to do so. Either way, he will be out there amplifying lies and trying to make truth and facts not matter. Tens of millions will think everything he says is gospel, because it is a cult, not a political movement. He killed 100s of them with is rallies, yet they love him.
Most importantly, the Trumpless GOP cannot ignore these people, because they are also known as the GOP base. It remains Trump-and-Q party, and everyone who wants to win elections as a Republican will have to walk the walk and talk the talk.
He has made them hate conservatism, which is an incredible trick.
Jobs Report
Did you know there was a GDP and jobs reports in the past 10 days and no one even noticed? A couple of charts. Deep dive coming later in the week.
In the first place, we are still not quite back to the Great Financial Crisis nadir.
Secondly, the big problems remain in education and high density services, which mirrors the PCE report:
More to come. I’m actually still on the previous week’s GDP report, if you can believe that.
The Worst Economy Ever
Trump was fond of saying that we had “the best economy ever,” and for some reason, even smart people bought into that nonsense. In actuality, it is the worst economy in the post-WWII era. None of that is his fault, as the problems preceded him by over a decade, but he failed to solve any of the underlying issues, and in many ways made them worse.
What I am talking about is that long-term growth rates are at their lowest ebb in all our data sets. Starting with real GDP:
At 2.1% in 2019. Note that after hanging out at 3%-3.5% for a couple of decades, that ended around 2000.
Real PCE, the driver of growth not just in the US, but globally:
Again, the lowest level in BEA’s data set, 2.4%. Again, a big shift happens around 2000.
Real investment:
The real investment tables only go back to 1967, so it is a much shorter period in the chart. But again, the lowest growth rate in BEA’s data is 2019, 2.3%, and again the shift happens in 2020.
Here’s the “Jobs President”:
Worst. Economy. Ever.
Why? You’ll just have to read my GDP article when it publishes this week. That’s called a “tease.”
COVID COVID COVID
Just as a marker of how absolutely wrong everything is, this should lead the newsletter, not end it. The recession doesn’t end until the pandemic ends. Period.
This is the week the US followed Europe and started going parabolic. I had to scale up the Y-axis yesterday.
102k cases in the moving average; 310 per million.
14 days in a row setting new records in the average.
National positivity rate up to 7.8%.
National case growth rate at 19%/week.
All 6 regions are still headed up. I also had to scale up this Y-axis for the mountain region today.
Weekly Growth Rates:
Central: 28%
Northeast: 22%
Pacific NW: 22%
Mountain: 21%
Mid-Atlantic: 20%
Sunbelt: 7%
We are almost to 1k deaths/week in the daily average, 223k in the official total, likely tens of thousands more in actuality. It is the 4th largest mass casualty event in US history.
1918-9 Flu: 675k
Civil War: 620k
WWII: 405k
C19: 223k
WWI: 117k
The Bad Now Map remains a shit show. Only 2 states are under 100 cases/million/day — VT and HI. Twenty states are over 400.
No, you are not imagining things:
Once I get the county-level election data, it will look even worse.
Every state except AL and TN are seeing rising case rates:
Also, this shit:
Gonna be a long winter. Buckle up buckaroos.
In Case You Missed It
One article on Seeking Alpha this week, a deep dive on Apple’s just-reported quarter.
Further Reading
The Atlantic is super-depressing post-election, and I agree with all of it.
The American System Is Broken by David Frum
A Large Portion of the Electorate Chose the Sociopath by Tom Nichols
Trump Won’t Accept Defeat. Ever. by Anne Applebaum
What to Expect Next From Donald Trump by Peter Nicholas
The Crisis of American Democracy Is Not Over by Adam Sewer