Caretakers
Things were relatively quiet in the US Tuesday, if you don't count Donald Trump's second impeachment trial.
It's clear, to most rational people anyway, what the result of those proceedings should be. I'm going to leave it at that until such a time as additional editorializing becomes unavoidable.
Markets are still content to surf the reflation wave in anticipation of forthcoming stimulus. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris met with Jamie Dimon, Doug McMillon, and a handful of other CEOs in the Oval O
” And especially not when juxtaposed with the dire situation on Main Street, and on state and local government balance sheets, where red ink not only matters, but can in fact be catastrophic.”
There it is in a nutshell.
Local governments are nailed not to the Cross of Gold, but to the cross of Calvinist-German pro-cyclical deficit requirements. You might think that rational people have washed their hands of the notion that austerity cures recessions. WRONG!
Main Street has the bankruptcy “out”, though it comes with the cost of seven years in Credit Rating purgatory.
One of my many “pet peeves” is that in the US, entrepreneurs and companies which fail and declare bankruptcy are hailed and held up as examples of the vibrancy and flexibility of US capitalism. But if a government or some common person does that, it’s considered to be a moral failing.