The only measure of the health of the country that Donald Trump cares about is the state of the stock market and he warned in the last debate that if Joe Biden wins, the market will crash. But the idea that investors just hang around until after the election results are released to make their decisions is absurd. They usually try to anticipate the future and take steps accordingly. Since Biden has been leading in the polls consistently for some time, if investors really feared a Biden win, the market would have already tanked.
In fact, it looks as if they are looking forward to a Biden victory, as well as Democratic control of the senate.
President Donald Trump loves to say that if Joe Biden wins the White House, stocks will crash, retirement accounts will vanish and an economic depression “the likes of which you’ve never seen” will engulf the nation.
But much of Wall Street is already betting on a Biden win — with a much different take on what the results will mean.
Traders in recent weeks have been piling into bets that a “blue wave” election, in which Democrats also seize the Senate, will produce an economy-juicing blast of fresh fiscal stimulus of $3 trillion or more that carries the U.S. past the coronavirus crisis and into a more normal environment for markets.
Far from panicking at the prospect of a Biden win, Wall Street CEOs, traders and investment managers now mostly say they would be fine with a change in the White House that reduces the Trump noise, lowers the threat of further trade wars and ensures a continuation of the government spending they’ve seen in recent years.
This should not be a surprise. The Democratic Party has also long been favorable to Wall Street, especially the financial sector. We must never forget that whatever the differences on social issues between Biden and Trump and between Democrats and Republicans, the US is a pro-war, pro-business one party state. Whatever the outcome, Wall Street will come out on top.
Given the market’s continued levitation in the face of the biggest economic dislocation since at least the oil crisis of 1973 (and possibly since WWII) and its dependence on a handful of mega-cap tech stocks with somewhat dubious business models, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see a crash anyway…
“the US is a pro-war, pro-business one party state”
And will remain one as long as progressive Americans keep on voting for candidates like JoeB.
Showing up to vote 3rd party once every 4 years won’t do the trick either. Or even every two years.
Maybe what WILL help is remember that there are other positions to vote for, not just the top one. And that there is a vote about who to vote for.
I don’t think that’s true any more. Of course the Democrats are a pro-war, pro-business party. But the Republicans are a proto-fascist party; their contempt for even the limited form of democracy the USA has traditionally had becomes more obvious by the day. It’s based in the fact that they know they cannot retain power by democratic means, and that demographic trends and the age-gradient in party support mean this will only become more so over the coming decades.