This Week In Economic Data Land
Pending home sales on Monday. Case Shiller 20 real estate prices, Chicago PMI, and PCE inflation rate on Tuesday. Relevant ETFs (BATS:ITB) (NYSEARCA:GLD). ISM manufacturing, car and truck sales, and Fed funds rate decision on Wednesday. Initial jobless claims on Thursday. Non-farm payrolls, unemployment rate on Friday. Plus there’s going to be 1,153 companies around the world reporting earnings this week. If they’re all as bad as Facebook’s last week, we could be in for some trouble.
SEE: Crypto Exchange Backed By Uber Co-Founder To Offer Commission Free Trading
Medicare For All? Sure, That’ll be $33 Trillion Please
One of the spending topics sure to come alive in Congress after this year’s midterm elections is Medicare for All, what with socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez taking office and her philosophical mentor Bernie Sanders by her side. The problem is, money. According to a George Mason University study, the bill would cost about $33 trillion, which would all have to be taken from taxpayers, which is more than the entire gross domestic product of the United States for a whole year. So all you really need to do is raise taxes to 100% of absolutely everything for about a year and a half and you’re pretty much there.
Mickey Mouse Is Fox’s New Mascot
Disney (NYSE:DIS) late last week approved the acquisition of Fox (NYSE:FOX) assets for $71 billion. The bid went up from an initial $52.4 billion offer, so we’re talking about a 35% increase. Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA) wanted to stay in the running until last week, when it conceded to Disney that Fox was just too rich for its blood. Fox owner Rupert Murdoch was happy. “The new Fox will have Fox News, FOX Business, Fox Broadcasting, Fox Sports, but the point is it will have a cash flow of at least $2 billion a year,” Murdoch said. “We can see expanding that and taking other opportunities and building another great company.”
New Yorker About to #Metoo CBS
Here we go again. CEO of CBS Les Moonves is about to be #Metoo’ed by the New Yorker, the same outlet that began the whole trend with Ronan Farrow’s sordid story on the crazy aggressive escapades of Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. CBS (NYSE:CBS) shares were down over 6% on Friday and it’s likely to get worse after the article is published. Well, at least it’ll probably be more justified than firing the Chairman of Papa John’s (NASDAQ:PZZA) for using the N-word in a role playing call about public relations crises.
Trump Threatens Shutdown Over Wall
This could rock markets just a bit. President Donald Trump has threatened to allow the government to shut down if he does not get the funding he wants from Congress to fund his border wall, again. He also wants them to back immigration law changes. Trump’s latest tweet on the matter:
Must get rid of Lottery, Catch & Release etc. and finally go to system of Immigration based on MERIT! We need great people coming into our Country!
The deadline for passing a spending bill, again, is September 30th, so we have another two months until this comes to a boil again. Of course by then we could be in a very different market environment.