Trump, Clinton Deadlocked in Bloomberg Poll Before Key Debate
Date
9/27/2016 7:22:36 AM
(MENAFN- ProactiveInvestors - UK) Fuller Treacy Money, 08:25
Trump, Clinton Deadlocked in Bloomberg Poll Before Key Debate
Here is the opening of this interesting article from Bloomberg:
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are locked in a tied two-way race for the presidency as they head to Hofstra University in New York on Monday night for one of the most highly anticipated debates in modern politics.
The Republican and Democratic nominees each get 46 percent of likely voters in a head-to-head contest in the latest Bloomberg Politics national poll, while Trump gets 43 percent to Clinton's 41 percent when third-party candidates are included.
Clinton faces higher expectations as tens of millions of people tune in for a television spectacle that could reach Super Bowl viewership levels. About half, 49 percent, say they anticipate the former secretary of state will perform better, while 39 percent say that for Trump, a real-estate developer and former TV personality.
Ann Selzer, the Iowa-based pollster who oversaw the survey, said there are signs that Clinton's margins with women and young voters have eroded over the past three months, helping to explain Trump's gains.
David Fuller's view
I suspect that I am far from alone in being surprised that Trump has made it this far in the 2016 US presidential race. To be tied in the current race with Hillary Clinton and actually ahead if we consider, as we should, third parties in the race is nothing short of astonishing.
Moreover, Trump has the current momentum, considering that Clinton had remained comfortably ahead until August. She can presumably reverse that by winning tonight's important debate comfortably. She should be able to do this but if Trump does not self-destruct in tonight's debate, Clinton could be in serious trouble.
Globally, this has proved to be a year for anti-establishment sentiments and the USA is no exception. Not since the Kennedys had a family been more establishment than the Bush clan, but neither money nor influential supporters could help Jeb's campaign. The Clinton's certainly have a high profile but that has not helped Hillary who struggled to win her party's nomination.
Would it not be ironic if establishment press attacks on Trump were actually helping him in the eyes of some undecided voters? Additionally, if third party candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein stay in the race (see Bloomberg's table in the article above), they will be pulling most of their support from Clinton.
Schaeuble Urges Lawmakers to Go Tough on Draghi, Bild Reports
Here is this topical short article from Bloomberg:
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has urged lawmakers to take a tough stance with European Central Bank President Mario Draghi when he goes before legislators in the lower house of parliament next week, Bild reported.
Schaeuble told lawmakers in the Bundestag to push Draghi to defend the central bank's low interest rates when he speaks to them on Sept. 28, the newspaper reported, citing those who were present at the meeting. Schaeuble expressed irritation at Draghi's criticism of Germany's trade surplus, saying it's the ECB that's at fault, according to Bild.
The German minister has criticized the ECB's extraordinary monetary measures under Draghi, saying low rates have squeezed savings for Germans and created excessive liquidity in markets.
David Fuller's view
The vision of a Federal Europe is going up in smoke because Germany has no interest in using its trade surplus to bailout ailing EU nations which cannot live with the Euro.
Email of the day 1
More on silence being good for our brains:
Le silence est d'or, la parole est d'argent as we say in French.
I have abandoned big cities New York, Paris and Toronto for a small town along the Great Lakes.
But silence is expensive; a lot of us cannot afford it. It cost friends (they are afraid to be bored and do not visit), it cost entertainment (Carnegie Hall, forget about it) it cost long travelling times (we have an airport but we are still waiting for Air Canada to land a 747 here) it costs family (kids, try to tell them about the therapeutic value of silence) it cost painstaking research when we travel (hours and hours to find a quiet room in a quiet lodging in a silent place. When I go to Paris I go to a place run by priests...)
It is a way of life, but I will never change it for a million dollars..
I'd better shut up now, right?
David Fuller's view
Not at all. Thanks for your interesting and highly relevant comments. Mrs Fuller and I will leave London, eventually, but I am sure we will also return for many short visits. That is the advantage of living in a smaller country.
Get Brexit Right, and I Will be a Tory Again
Here are two sections from this informative guest article by Hugh Sykes in The Telegraph:
I left the Conservatives in 1992. I had been a member for 20 years, throughout much of a career which began with scrapping buses and ended up creating 175,000 jobs. I worked my way up from the bottom with the party. Millions of us did, following Margaret Thatcher.
But when John Major started fudging on the Maastricht treaty on the single currency, I told him I had to go. Since then this has country has stumbled on with the EU disaster through the Blair and Cameron eras. Until now.
Brexit means everything to me. After I left the Conservatives, I spent millions on campaigns to end the influence of the unelected bureaucracy in Brussels over this great nation. In 2004 I met Nigel Farage and supported Ukip in the European elections that year. Nigel was the master communicator we needed, a man of passion, drive and bravery. That year we won 12 seats. In 2014 we won 24 seats, beating Labour and the Conservatives. That forced David Cameron to hold the EU referendum.
For me, that referendum was the goal. That was what it was all about. And we have achieved it. What we need to do now is to make sure the Conservatives, my old party, implement the result.
What does that mean? The simple fact is we have to get our borders completely under our control. So we must leave the single market. Another reason to to do so is that small businesses, which account for 99 per cent of private sector companies, and which employ 60 per cent of the private sector working population, are smothered by regulations from Brussels. These are the businesses generating new jobs – not big banks. Even though many have no trade with the EU they still have to comply with endless EU regulations.
This, like so many of the powers acquired by Brussels, is astonishing. Frankly, it is shocking that it was the Conservative Party gave up all these powers to an unelected bureaucracy.
The Conservatives can now change all this, and I want to return to the party to help them. But to do so I, like so many who voted to leave, need a clear commitment that two clear promises are going to be delivered.
We must take back full control of our borders. And we must leave the single market.
And:
Once these issues are dealt with I will return to the Conservatives and help them, financially if need be, to implement this programme.
One way or another we will get this done. A nation without its own borders is not a nation. A nation which does not make its own laws is not a nation. A nation which cannot fish its waters as it wants is not a nation. A nation which has handed over its very passport is not a nation. These things matter. The man in the street wants his passport back.
I've never met Theresa May but she looks like a good prime minister to me. She will need to be. Society is terribly damaged. It may not seem that way in London but huge parts of the North and elsewhere are scarred. Today the Conservatives have the best chance to rebuild the nation since Thatcher.
I am a One Nation Conservative. I come from the grassroots. I started with just £200. I didn't go to Oxbridge. I'm not a pencilpusher from Goldman Sachs. But I have created 14 businesses and not one has gone down the pan. I reckon I've got reasonable judgment. My judgment is that freedom and democracy are beyond value.
David Fuller's view
I have nothing but respect for Hugh Sykes. People like him are the backbone of nation. Margaret Thatcher understood this. I believe Theresa May does as well, judging from her opening speech in from of number 10 Downing Street, shortly after becoming Prime Minister.
I think the Conservative Party will struggle if it is unwilling or unable to break free from the EU.
(I emboldened the four sentences in the article above for emphasis.)
Email of the day 2
On Friday's Big Picture Audio:
David, superb last night. The way you worked from stocks, through bonds & currencies to resources kept me focused and more importantly, I learned.
I also agree very much with an earlier comment you made, regarding the need to alternate with Eoin because I truly believe that you complement each other very nicely.
Many thanks & regards
David Fuller's view
Thanks for your kind words.
I agree that Eoin and I complement each other and I look forward to doing more Audios.
Brexit Will Complete the Economic Revolution of Margaret Thatcher
Here is the opening of this informative article by Nigel Lawson for The Telegraph:
As the financial markets, contrary to the scaremongering of the political and economic establishments, have already recognised, the potential economic benefits of Brexit are substantial.
The most obvious is the saving of our massive net financial contribution to the European Union. In this context I am constantly astonished to hear representatives of British universities, whom one would expect to be reasonably intelligent, bemoaning the prospective loss of EU money. There is no EU money. It is British taxpayers' money, recycled via the EU. And since we pay into the EU budget roughly £2 for every £1 we get back, it is an appallingly costly form of recycling.
Then there is the newfound freedom to negotiate mutually beneficial trade deals with the major world economies, something that the EU has been engaged in for years – indeed, for decades – and has singularly failed to achieve.
But probably the biggest single benefit is the ability Brexit will give us to engage in a thoroughgoing programme of intelligent deregulation.
The European Union indulges in excessive regulation for three self-reinforcing reasons. In the first place, that is the nature of bureaucracies everywhere, and the European Commission is the ultimate bureaucracy. In the second place, it is an article of EU faith that 'more Europe' is always desirable, and all too often 'more Europe' is seen as more European regulation. And in the third place, Brussels is one of the two world centres of corporate lobbying (the other is Washington).
There may be no single regulation that stands out as being particularly damaging, but the cumulative effect is substantial. Examples include the system of 'CE' (conformité européene) marking on goods, which frequently imposes excessively burdensome standards on all EU companies, including small companies which do no business at all outside the UK. Then there is the notorious Working Time Directive, which limits the hours that employees can work, even if they wish to earn more by working longer.
This is potentially so damaging to small businesses that the UK managed to secure an opt-out from its most restrictive provisions. But the European Commission is determined to remove the UK opt-out. It has already tried to do so on two occasions, and sooner or later, were we to remain in the EU, it would succeed.
The vast and ever-growing corpus of EU regulation causes economic damage throughout the EU. But it is particularly damaging to the UK and to UK SMEs since we have in this country a more rigorous insistence on the rule of law and its implementation than is the case in many, if not most, of the EU's member states. That is, in itself, a virtue, and should not change. But it makes the escape from the EU regulatory burden all the more important.
David Fuller's view
I assume that Lord Lawson is correct on the very important point made in his second paragraph above. If so, it is all the more surprising that so few commentators have mentioned this throughout the Brexit discussions.
(I emboldened the second paragraph in the article above.)
Email of the day on zero down mortgages
Today I heard on the BBC news that in the US the banks are giving mortgages with "0" down payments. Is this correct, and if so how serious do you think is the risk of a similiar financial crises as we had in 2008.
As always thanks a lot for the wonderful service
Eoin Treacy's view
Thank you for your kind words and this question. As you are no doubt aware NINJA loans (No Income, No Job, No Assets) were popular ahead of the credit crisis as lax lending standards made property available to people who had no chance of ever paying back the loans.
100% mortgages do exist in the USA and are not a new feature. For example the USDA (Department of Agriculture) offers zero down mortgages for rural development and the Veterans' Administration (VA) offers even more attractive terms to veterans. This article from themortagereports.com may also be of interest.
Musings from the Oil Patch September 20th 2016
Thanks to a subscriber for this edition of Allen Brooks' ever interesting report for PPHB. Here is a section:
So looking forward in a world of slow economic activity as experienced for the past decade, we can see VMT growth slowing and potentially a shift toward more fuel-efficient vehicle purchases – both not positive for gasoline demand. We then have the question of the impact of greater millennials in the population and the impact of the disruptive factors we enumerated earlier.
A Ford Motor Company (F-NYSE) senior executive told an analyst meeting recently that the company expected autonomous vehicles to represent 5% of the auto fleet sales in 2025, or potentially a million cars per year. Self-driving vehicle technology seems to be moving toward the mainstream faster than many anticipated. The City of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is now allowing Uber to test an autonomous vehicle taxi service. The cars are equipped with 20 cameras and seven sensors to help them navigate the city's streets. The taxis will be required to have a human driver behind the wheel in case control of the vehicle needs to shift, along with an engineer in the front seat. Right now the service is free, and it has attracted many reporters who will publicize it. Will it attract many customers? Unless a taxi causes significant traffic disruptions or a life-threatening accident, we suspect the test will be declared a success. The industry, however, is still awaiting the federal government's issuance of guidelines about how self-driving vehicle regulations should be constructed. Traffic laws are primarily under local control, but basic national standards are important for the regulatory process and the vehicle manufacturing process, including vehicle safety and emissions standards. Steering wheels and pedals, or not?
Self-driving technology's primary benefit is to reduce and/or eliminate accidents and especially deaths. In 2014, according to data from the U.S. Department of Transportation, which is responsible for the Fatality Analysis Reporting System, there were 29,989 fatal motor vehicle crashes in which 32,675 deaths occurred. This represented 10.2 deaths per 100,000 people and 1.08 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled. Some 38% of the deaths involved car accidents, while 25% related to pickup and SUV vehicle accidents. Only 2% of the deaths involved large trucks while the balance was accounted by motorcyclists, pedestrians and bicyclists. All deaths from large truck crashes were 12% of total vehicle deaths.
There remain a number of legal issues about self-driving cars that need to be resolved. Who is given a ticket for a self-driving car failing to heed traffic rules or becoming involved in an accident: the passenger, a driver in the vehicle, the owner of the vehicle, or the engineer who wrote the software? These issues will be overcome with time, but the impact on energy markets will likely come in dramatic fashion. Once auto companies feel comfortable that their self-driving cars will not be involved in accidents, they can begin designing vehicles for greater passenger comfort and entertainment, while using lighter materials since the heavy steel cages required now to protect passengers in accidents will no longer be needed. Reducing vehicle weight will make vehicles much more fuel-efficient and thus reduce future fuel consumption.
Eoin Treacy's view
A link to the full report is posted in the Subcsriber's Area.
Three themes of autonomous vehicles, electric vehicles and new ownership models tend to be conflated when speculation about the future of transportation is discussed. These could all have an effect on the number of miles travelled but could also break the link between that measure and gasoline consumption.
Guide to the 2016 Elections
Thanks to a subscriber for this report from Wells Fargo offering a summary of potential outcomes to the upcoming elections. Here is a section:
Some key risk seem clear: Higher budget deficits and trade restrictions are prominent risks in our scenarios. Limiting trade, widening deficits, and raising the public debt should be negative for the dollar and U.S. financial asset prices during the next four years.
What it may mean for investors: We believe that the worst risks to the financial markets, discussed on page4s 6-10, have the lowest probabilities of occurring and advise investors not to allow the candidates' broad unpopularity to drive fear of worse financial market impacts that are likely. In our view, investors should avoid large portfolio changes based on election fears or speculations.
Divided government obscures some potential opportunities but clarifies others: The strong cross-party ideological divide complicates the task of spotting investment opportunities from immigration, health care, trade, and regulation policies. Yet, sector opportunities seem clearer from prescription drug prices caps and, especially, fiscal policy, including tax reform and new infrastructure and defense outlays.
What it may mean for investors: The previous pages identify some potential investment opportunities, but clues about policy direction may emerging only slowly until January 2018 and possibility not until mid-2016. As the eventual policy priorities become more discernible to financial markets, investors might use this guide to identify the issues and the potential investment implications.
Eoin Treacy's view
A link to the full report is posted in the Subscriber's Area.
The media circus surrounding the US Presidential elections is in full swing with the much anticipated first debate this evening. What is perhaps most important from a markets' perspective is that both candidates support increased fiscal spending.
Fuller Treacy Money