The Finance 202: Trump undercuts his own effort to tie Biden to Wall Street in final debate

Biden has a fundraising edge from the industry, not a monopoly. He has raised $57.7 million from the securities and investment industry, compared with $13.8 million for Trump, according to the latest figures from the Center for Responsive Politics. 

(Biden shot back in the debate that his average donation was $43. Biden is overall winning the cash war: His campaign came into October with $177 million, nearly three times as much as Trump’s $63 million.) 

Trump asserted without evidence or citation: “They said the stock market will boom if I’m elected. If he’s elected, the stock market will crash.” (The S&P 500 is up more than 3 percent since Biden solidified his lead in the race with his first debate performance three weeks ago.)

Biden seized the opportunity. “Look, the idea that the stock market is booming is his only measure of what’s happening,” he said. “Where I come from in Scranton and Claymont, the people don’t live off of the stock market. … What happens to the ordinary people out there? What happens to them?”

The retort scored a point for the “Middle-Class Joe” image the Democratic nominee has sought to portray throughout the race and, indeed, his career in public life — and against Trump’s criticism of Biden as a creature of Washington with 47 years there and little to show for it.

But Trump doubled down. “401(k)s are through the roof,” he said. “People’s stock are through the roof.”

A recent study by the Federal Reserve found that stock market ownership is increasingly concentrated in the hands of the very rich, while most of those at the bottom of the economic ladder hold no stake in the market at all, including through retirement accounts. Per the New York Times: “About 94 percent of the wealthiest families hold stocks, compared to one of every five households in the bottom 25 percent.” 

“We have to open our country. We’re not going to have a country,” he said. “You can’t do this. We can’t keep this country closed. This is a massive country with a massive economy.” Biden maintained that the country can “walk and chew gum at the same time” by providing businesses with the resources they need to reopen safely. 

Trump appeared to connect with this argument. A snap poll of debate watchers by CNN found the president secured his only edge over Biden on the issue of the economy:

The result is consistent with polling that has found it is the lone issue on which voters favor Trump, though that advantage has vanished in some recent surveys. 

Biden said the debate veered off track when the candidates descended into attacking each other’s families. Instead, he said, they should stay focused on middle-class families. “You’re getting hurt badly right now,” Biden said, addressing viewers by speaking directly to the camera. He acknowledged that people were struggling over replacing old tires or paying the mortgage. 

Trump dismissed that as “a typical political statement. … He looks, the family, around the table, everything, just the typical politician.” 

The knives are out for the Treasury Secretary once more: “Republicans are growing increasingly frustrated with Mnuchin as he makes what they see as unacceptable compromises in his quest for a stimulus deal with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi,” Erica Werner and Jeff Stein report.

“Mnuchin has committed to a top-line figure of around $1.9 trillion, much too high for many Senate Republicans to swallow. That includes at least $300 billion for state and local aid, also a non-starter for many in the GOP. The treasury secretary is also giving ground on multiple specific policy issues, such as reducing payments that Republicans wanted to go to farmers so that some of the money would go for food boxes instead … He has left open the possibility of allowing even more money to flow to states and localities via Community Development Block Grants sought by Democrats.”

• Key quote: “He negotiates harder with his own side than he does with her. Folks over here are sick of it,” one Senate GOP aide told my colleagues.

“The complaints come as Pelosi (D-Calif.) voices optimism about her ongoing talks with Mnuchin, making clear that she believes she has leverage because Trump wants a big new deal …”

Banks led the gains: “The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 152.84 points higher, or 0.5 percent, at 28,363.66. Earlier in the day, the Dow fell as much as 170 points. The S&P 500 gained 0.5 percent to close at 3,453.49 and the Nasdaq Composite climbed 0.2 percent to 11,506.01,” CNBC’s Fred Imbert and Thomas Franck report.

“The 10-year Treasury yield hit a four-month high. JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley popped 3.5 percent and 2.8 percent, respectively. Citigroup advanced 2.2 percent.”

But the economic strain persists: “Another 787,000 people filed new unemployment claims last week,” Eli Rosenberg reports.

“Claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, for gig and self-employed workers, also fell slightly, to 345,440. The total number of people on all unemployment programs dropped by about 1 million to 23.1 million by early October …  Economists say they have been concerned by the continued high level of new unemployment claims so far into the pandemic, saying that these layoffs are more likely to be permanent than those that occurred early in the crisis.”

• U.S. recorded more than 73,000 new cases Thursday, a high not seen since late July. “Twelve states — including Indiana, Oklahoma, Idaho and Montana — reached their highest seven-day average for new cases,” per The Post. 
• Trump defends his attacks on Anthony S. Fauci: “In the debate, Trump defended his frequent attacks on Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, claiming he gets along well with him, but then repeated the misleading of Fauci’s early remarks on mask wearing and accused him of being partisan,” Colby Itkowitz and Salvador Rizzo report.
• Gilead’s Remdesivir becomes first treatment to earn FDA approval. “The approval of remdesivir, sold under the brand name Veklury, will allow Gilead to market the drug and talk about its benefits to doctors, nurses, and patients,” Bloomberg’s Robert Langreth reports. “That could help solidify its position as a go-to medicine for Covid-19 patients even as other drugs for the disease begin to reach the market.”
• FDA advisory committee debates safety and efficacy standards for a coronavirus vaccine: “The session served in large part as a venue for the agency to try to reassure the public that any vaccine will be held to a high standard, not the relatively low bar used this year for emergency use authorization for treatments,” Laurie McGinley and Carolyn Y. Johnson report.

• AT&T dragged down by media ventures: “Overall, AT&T’s quarterly revenue dropped 5 percent to $42.3 billion. The company attributed a roughly $2.5 billion revenue loss to covid-19, as theater closures shrank box-office receipts from Warner Bros. movies and wireless roaming fees dried up,” the Wall Street Journal’s Drew FitzGerald reports.
• Southwest CEO says it may be a decade before business travel returns: “Southwest’s third-quarter operating revenue of $1.8 billion represented a 68 percent decline compared with a year earlier. However, its daily cash burn of roughly $16 million in the period was an improvement over about $23 million per day in the second quarter,” CNBC’s Kevin Stankiewicz reports.
• Gap shares hit 52-week high on plans to close stores: “The apparel retailer said it expects to close roughly 30 percent of Gap and Banana Republic stores in North America by the end of fiscal 2023. By that time, it said, it plans to bring in about 80 percent of revenue from e-commerce and off-mall locations,” CNBC’s Melissa Repko reports.
• Gucci struggles: The Italian fashion house reported a 12 percent drop in quarter sales. “Gucci is struggling because it has come to depend heavily on what was, until the pandemic, a highly-profitable strategy: selling to well-heeled shoppers, particularly the Chinese, when they travel abroad,” the WSJ’s Matthew Dalton reports.
• Target shoppers can make reservations to avoid crowds: “Most large retailers offer curbside pickup and contactless checkout to accommodate social distancing, and many have scrapped such Black Friday traditions as Thanksgiving Day openings and ‘doorbuster’ deals to fill their stores. But shopping by appointment is uncommon among retailers,” Taylor Telford reports.

The DOJ makes the 1MDB bribery scheme punishment official: “Prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York charged the bank with conspiracy to violate the anti-bribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which forbids companies or individuals from paying foreign governments to retain business. The settlement includes the largest monetary penalty ever assessed under corporate criminal bribery law,” Jacob Bogage reports.

• Some of that money is coming from those at the top: “Goldman is moving to claw back or cut a total of $174 million in compensation from current and former employees including CEO David Solomon and former CEO Lloyd Blankfein over the scandal,” CNBC’s Wilfred Frost and Hugh Son report.

Trump orders review of auto parts firm pension cuts: “Trump ordered a review of decade-old pension cuts to some retirees at a former General Motors GM auto parts unit …,” Reuters’s David Shepardson reports. “The cuts affected about 20,000 salaried retirees, including about 5,000 in Ohio, a battleground state …”

Appeals court sides with California on order to make Uber and Lyft drivers employees: “Uber and Lyft were given 30 days from an expected later filing to come into compliance with the order. That will effectively require the companies to make drivers employees unless a November ballot measure aimed at codifying their status as independent contractors renders the ruling moot, or a subsequent appeal to the state Supreme Court is successful,” Faiz Siddiqui reports from San Francisco.

The GOP wants answers about how the social networks handled a New York Post story: “GOP leaders on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted unanimously to approve the formal summons targeting Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, a move that the panel’s chairman, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham, said would provide his colleagues ‘leverage to secure their testimony’ at an unspecified date,” Tony Romm reports.

“The subpoena itself specifically says lawmakers seek to press the two tech executives over their ‘suppression and/or censorship’ of reporting published by the New York Post about Hunter Biden, the son of Biden. Facebook and Twitter each limited the spread of the Post’s story — with Twitter initially blocking links outright before relenting — out of concern about the origins of the information.” 

The jockeying for potential jobs in a would-be Biden administration is heating up: “Sen. Sanders (I-Vt.) has been making his push for the top job at the Labor Department in part by reaching out to allies on the transition team,” Politico’s Alice Miranda Ollstein, Megan Cassella and Holly Otterbein report.

• Biden’s team is preparing for a bumpy transition: “Senior advisers to Biden are preparing for the possibility that the Trump administration will throw up roadblocks to Biden’s transition to the presidency if he wins the election …,” the WSJ’s Andrew Restuccia and Eliza Collins report. “ Biden’s transition team, a low-profile group of policy experts tasked with making sure the former vice president is ready to take office, has crafted alternative plans if Trump—who has given mixed messages on whether he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power—refuses to comply with requirements that a president-elect’s team be allowed into federal agencies ahead of Inauguration Day.”

Some liberals seek to pressure Biden on his chief of staff: “The poll of chiefs of staff … is an unusual gambit and shows the level of organization among progressives as they press Biden to embrace a more left-wing agenda,” Politico’s Alex Thompson reports. 

“The poll, conducted by progressive think tank Data for Progress in conjunction with advocacy group Demand Progress, surveyed Republicans, Democrats and independents. The survey does not name the trio of longtime Biden advisers — Steve Ricchetti, Ron Klain and Bruce Reed are unknown to most Americans — but rather polls their resumes, particularly their past corporate and lobbying work.”