‘Never Quite Say Never’

Cans were kicked both on fresh stimulus to help the US weather the winter virus storm and on a Brexit deal.

Boris Johnson and Ursula Von Der Leyen gave negotiators until Sunday to strike an agreement on a divorce deal, but both acknowledged the difficulties. A no-deal scenario is now seen as the most likely outcome, according to officials.

The European Commission on Thursday floated a set of contingency measures to ensure basic reciprocal air and road connectivity between the EU and the UK, along with reciprocal fishing access after December 31. Asked by the BBC if it’s possible talks will extend beyond Sunday, UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said “never quite say never,” but cautioned that “there must come some point of finality for this.” (Write your own jokes.)

In Washington, an ostensibly convoluted situation is actually quite simple. Nancy Pelosi wants to run with the bipartisan stimulus deal that was the basis for last week’s momentum, while Mitch McConnell prefers Steve Mnuchin’s version, which includes direct checks to individuals at the apparent expense of federal unemployment assistance.

A seven-day CR gives Congress another week to work this out. Pandemic relief would theoretically be attached to a broader spending deal. The deadline is December 18. To quote the UK’s Raab, “never quite say never [but] there must come some point of finality for this.”

Meanwhile, Americans are dying — literally. In fact, daily deaths in the US from COVID-19 rose above 3,000 on Wednesday.

Hospitalizations, meanwhile, are above 106,000, according to data from The COVID Tracking Project. (Note: I use CDC data for the daily death figures, which is a bit more noisy in some spots than the figures from Johns Hopkins and The COVID Tracking Project, both of which reported in excess of 3,000 fatalities yesterday, records for their series.)

The CDC sees the US death toll hitting 300,000 by Christmas. California reported nearly 31,000 new cases. That’s a record. Hospitalizations in the state rose nearly 4% in just 24 hours.

Meanwhile, China plans to sanction more US officials, in a reciprocal action for measures adopted against Beijing by the Trump administration earlier this week. Hua Chunying, China’s fireball of a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, didn’t mention any names, but did say China intends to target (in a diplomatic way, of course) personnel in the executive branch of the US government as well as their family members.

This all has a kind of “different day, same narratives” feel to it, and that’s unfortunate because none of these narratives are particularly positive.

Rabobank’s Michael Every summed it up. “There is little to report on Brexit,” he wrote Thursday. “There is equally little to report on US fiscal stimulus.”