Ramblings

Macro Perspectives: Fri 23 Oct 2020

The last U.S. Presidential debate took place last night.

Full Disclaimer - at the time of writing I have not seen nor read any media regarding the relative performance of the candidates or topics of discussion. Should there be any noteworthy points of interest, my thoughts will be included in Monday’s Macro Perspective.

Before the debate, as suspected, and consistent with the evolution in 2016, the gap in the national polls has been narrowing into the final two weeks before the election - though it remains wide at +7.9 Biden (wider than the +4.6 for Clinton at this stage).

We've talked a lot about the China national security threat this week and we've heard practically nothing on this topic in the debates and town halls. With big media in complete control of the election narrative, it seems to be a forbidden topic. Not surprisingly, big tech (social media) and traditional media both rely heavily on Chinese investment, ad dollars and the lure of market opportunities in China.

Even the FBI report Wednesday night on foreign election interference, while calling out Russia and Iran, made no mention of China. Twitter alone removed over 170,000 accounts back in June, tied to Chinese disinformation schemes.

Forget everything else, dealing with China is what this election is all about. Why? What rational person thinks it's a good idea for a communist country to become the global economic superpower?

If they do, I suspect they won't be promoting democracy.

You can see in this survey from Pew Research, from last December, China is nearly there (i.e. global economic superpower)...

It’ll be noteworth to see if China was discussed in the debate, and to what extent.