Subject: DC Research Report
From: "Eric Schwerin" <[email-masked]>
To: "Hunter Biden" <[email-masked]>, "Alexander S. Mackler" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 2015 10:21:21 -0400

This is from a well-know research report that goes to a large number of recipients on Wall Street.  See part on Biden polls…..

From: Greg Valliere <[email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>>
Date: August 20, 2015 at 7:54:04 AM EDT
To: <[email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>>
Subject: PRG -- Morning Bullets: We Were Wrong About Donald Trump; Don Kohn on FOMC Statement; Stunning New Biden Polls

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Greg Valliere, Chief Political Strategist
202-600-7160 [email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>
August 20, 2015
We Were Wrong on Donald Trump; Don Kohn on FOMC Statement; Stunning New Biden Polls
MEA CULPA:    No one likes to be wrong, but we were plenty wrong about Donald Trump.  It's obvious that he's a bully demagogue with incoherent ideas -- but go figure: he's a Superstar, his rallies are the toughest ticket in politics. We thought Trump's descent would begin after his appalling debate performance, but it did not.  Did you see his electrifying act in New Hampshire last night?  Trump connects with angry voters, and he's not going away.
 
IT'S STILL HIGHLY UNLIKELY THAT TRUMP WILL BE THE GOP NOMINEE (exactly eight years ago Rudy Giuliani had a wide lead among Republicans).  Trump eventually will say something so over-the-top that voters will proclaim "enough" and look more carefully at Marco Rubio or John Kasich or perhaps the phlegmatic Jeb Bush. Or the press will dig deeply into Trump's past.  Or his policy prescriptions will become juicy targets.  But Trump's descent may be more gradual than we expected, and that will have two major implications.
 
FIRST,   Trump has stirred a hornet's nest with his deeply anti-growth agenda. As Larry Kudlow and other pro-growth commentators have noted, Trump's positions on deportation, trade and currencies are all anti-growth, and if the electorate embraces those views, that may be an unfortunate Trump legacy. SECOND, he's doing real damage to the Republican Party.  Even if he doesn't run as a third party candidate, Trump has so scathingly belittled the entire field that you have to wonder -- can any of his challengers survive the mockery?  Only Ted Cruz (a candidate to watch very carefully) has escaped Trump's lash.
 
OUR BOTTOM LINE is that there's no way Trump will be the nominee or the next president.  But mea culpa -- we have to admit that we have a blind spot, and we were wrong about him this summer.  It seemed so logical to dismiss such a buffoon, but this is politics, and logic doesn't always apply. 
 
A VERY CLOSE FED CALL:  The other Donald -- our friend Don Kohn, the former Fed Vice Chairman -- said in an email late yesterday that the FOMC statement did little to telegraph the very close call on September "liftoff."  It's a divided committee, he said, with diverse views.  "Mechanically and operationally, they seem ready," Don said, since they debated a post-liftoff landscape, which is likely to be dovish.  "But dampened wages and compensation will reinforce those who still see significant slack," and it's unclear whether they have confidence that inflation will return to 2% in the medium run. So now it's on to the Sept. 4 jobs report, which may tip the scales.
 
HILLARY HITS BACK -- AND HERE COMES BIDEN:  Hillary Clinton's aides are beginning an "educational campaign" about confusing treatment of classified documents within the government, while asserting that emails she had on her server were not classified as top secret when she got them. Good luck with that -- and good luck blaming the press, a tactic that always backfires. She has a new problem today -- Quinnipiac polls just released in the past hour that show Joe Biden running as well if not better than Hillary in matchups with Republicans in key states. This is stunning -- she's in real trouble.

PRG RESEARCH: Our colleague Paul Glenchur wrote yesterday about FCC's final order on Dish Network bidding credits . . . 

 

 
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Eric D. Schwerin
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