Thursday, October 15, 2020

As Virus Spread, Reports of Trump Administration’s Private Briefings Fueled Sell-Off

(NYT)

On the afternoon of Feb. 24, President Trump declared on Twitter that the coronavirus was “very much under control” in the United States...He even added an observation for investors: “Stock market starting to look very good to me!”

But hours earlier...privately addressing board members of the conservative Hoover Institution [named for...

...the one at Stanford, also home to..

...others who have their heads in concrete.]

[Trump liars and grifters] were less confident. Tomas J. Philipson, a senior economic adviser...,told the group he could not yet estimate the effects of the virus on the American economy. To some in the group, the implication was that an outbreak could prove worse than Mr. Philipson and other Trump administration advisers were signaling in public at the time.

The next day, board members — many of them Republican donors — got another taste of government uncertainty from Larry Kudlow, the director of the National Economic Council. Hours after he had boasted on CNBC that the virus was contained in the United States and “it’s pretty close to airtight,” Mr. Kudlow delivered a more ambiguous private message. He asserted that the virus was “contained in the U.S., to date, but now we just don’t know”...

...“What struck me,” [a] hedge fund...consultant wrote, was that nearly every official he heard from raised the virus “as a point of concern, totally unprovoked.”

The consultant’s assessment quickly spread through parts of the investment world...traders spotted the immediate significance: The president’s aides appeared to be giving wealthy party donors an early warning of a potentially impactful contagion at a time when Mr. Trump was publicly insisting that the threat was nonexistent.

Trump,