#EP67 NYSE Volte-face on de-listing 3 China Telecom cos., US Elections Pence play & more!

Sree Iyer: Episode 67, January the 5th 2021. This is your host Sree Iyer. I am with Sridhar Chityalaji and welcome to Global daily insights. Namaskar sir, How are you?

Sridhar Chityala: Namaskar and good morning to you. Good morning to everybody and good evening to everybody in India and other parts of the world or good afternoon to those in Europe.

Sree Iyer: We are going to start with some rapid developments that are taking place in the United States elections. To start off, there is a fifth option that is in front of Mike Pence perhaps, Sridharji, you can explain to our viewers what that fifth option is of what Mike Pence can do tomorrow, sir?

Sridhar Chityala: I think Mike Pence wants to hear the objections, which is now almost eminent or imminent both on the House and the Senate side and once all the sessions are complete and once he has heard. It’s conceivable that he does, he can exercise a constitutional option of sending the votes back to the respective legislatures and ask them to recertify the results, in the event that the motion is defeated, motion here being that the contesting of the elections is defeated. Then, there is an option which the five battleground States, I think six battleground States had exercised, which is namely that in these kinds of circumstances that their votes should be countered not the certified results from the state. Before I begin to look at those options, he can say would the states like to, the states are all in session, by the way, they don’t need to be convened. The states are all in session. So, would the states like to recertify the results and send them back. So, that’s a potential kind of a scenario that he has, whether he exercises that choice which again seems to be a reasonable choice for those who are contesting, unreasonable for those who believe this is all over and you know, there’s always a voice of dissent and there’s a voice of acceptance. So, the voice of acceptance is Biden, but, now it has come to Mike Pence to make the decision. Remember that there’s been a lot of contention around what Mike Pence should do and should not do so. This is one option that he has.

Sree Iyer: The other interesting development is that in Wisconsin, there is a news item that is coming out that on Thursday, the Wisconsin legislature is going to vote and this is going to be a resolution that they’re going to be introduced, which will likely decertify the state and awarded to President Trump. So, looking at what you just said about Mike Pence sending it back. Today is the Tuesday, the 5^th, tomorrow is Wednesday, right and let say Mike Pence decide to send it back to the States. You can see that Wisconsin is getting ready to do something. So what do you make of this? So this is a tremendously new development that nobody had foreseen.

Sridhar Chityala: I think we have consistently maintained, notwithstanding some of the adversarial comments. Albeit, maybe sporadic two three four people making comments in the in our kind of responses in the comment section, that this has been a contentious election many have been in denial mode. Just to make one thing clear, Mr Biden himself has not commented, this is in press reports. You can look at any of the press reports. Mr Biden himself has not commented anything about Trump’s moves to reclaim the presidency using this type of process. He has not, he is only said, you know to move on, I am the contender and I am the incumbent, I would like to do it. So, what you have now witnessed is as the evidence begins to grow, Wisconsin has now just breaking news coming up with this legislation or coming up with an order of business listed in the risk. You can go to Wisconsin.gov and take a look which is to say, a potential decertification of the previous result and nominating President Trump as the winner from the Wisconsin State. It seems to be the agenda item at least one of the news sites is reporting. What does that mean? Well, there is a constitutional thing which is namely for anything that is to be counted. They only have time till tomorrow, which is by late this evening. They have to send if they have any issues or recertification or desertification Etc. They need to send it by January 6th, which is what we had indicated but having said that this election is so contentious, almost every facet of the Constitutional clauses are going to be looked at and analyzed to make sure that whatever is, because remember one thing, we have to be very clear that the only body other than the vice president who presides over, what he does in the joint houses on January 6^th, the only body which can certify and send the result is the state legislature. So, most of the cases, this is where people are getting hung up. Most of the cases have been declined either on procedural issues or the courts are said saying, at least the supreme court, ok, forget the state courts, which seems to have taken political kind of postures depending on who is the judge in the specific Court.

The Supreme Court is saying do not make Supreme Court responsible for the conduct of the election and that responsibility constitutionally only sits with the legislature. The constitution is very clear, the legislature is the only body which can enact laws, which can conduct elections, which can certify the results and send it, this is not the Supreme Court’s responsibility. So, I think they’ve been very clear and this is where people have mistaken which is to stay that President Trump has lost 49 out of the 50 cases. By the way, if tomorrow Trump gets elected overturning, remember Biden cannot go back to the same courts and say overturn for me, you have overturned 49 times for Trump. So, if you go to the 50th, you will also be overturned. So, they have created precedence which is to state, Ok, you know all the cases are gone, Biden has no recourse to go back and he has to only go back to the state legislatures, which has either rectified or reassessed and said, this is my final decision in terms of where I’m going.

Sree Iyer: Yes indeed, Wisconsin’s move is significant in the face of the data that we submitted about what happened in just one County, the Antrim County where the EVMs upon repeated testing at various dates, produce different results and a manual recount gave that particular County to Donald Trump. So, this is a very very interesting development. It is likely that other states might also convene on Thursday. So, this kind of tells you the path down which Mike Pence might be heading, so we’ll have to wait and see but be that as it may, it’s very very very interesting times here. Sridharji, there are the Georgia Senate races that is happening today. What do you think the significance of that is going to be? I think that is a separate thread, isn’t it? That is just going to determine, what is the situation of the position of Democrats and Republicans are going to be in the Senate right?

Sridhar Chityala: Correct. Correct, correct. So we’ll just break away for a minute to that strand of what you call thought process as well as the issues and then we’ll come back into what’s going to happen on January 6th. As far as the significance of the Georgia elections is very profound and impactful irrespective of who the president is, because the Senate is effectively their final decision making body for a number of items. So, historically, most of the decisions they try to get it through Senate. So, therefore Senate is an important vehicle historically the Republicans have controlled the Senate and managed to be a deterrent in making sure that the at least Pro conservative agenda is adhered to. The case in point here is the 600 dollars versus $2,000. So Entire election campaign is being run on basically 3 things one is about the future of America. This is about the progressive agenda. This is about getting 2,000 dollars versus not getting $2,000. This is about, you know, pro-immigration or you know pro certain policies. So, therefore, this is all about, you know, the agenda around what they call the Pressing policy. The word Progressive itself has emerged more and more and more recently and you can say the progressive agenda is the point of contention in the Senate Election for the two Seats. They are saying this is what decides otherwise our agenda will be defeated despite having a president and despite having a house.

Sree Iyer: So let us take a quick look at what is being talked about by Ex. President, President Obama about this, you know the battle between progressives and conservatives and he has been espousing this, perhaps one of the unusual things about this election is that he’s the only one who has been actively campaigning. There are many living ex-presidents. None of the others ventured into the battlefield. So it seems strange that one person should be holding the torch and trying to get Biden elected? What are your thoughts, sir?

Sridhar Chityala: Well, it is fascinating. I think it’s a great question that you have asked. I actually wrote in one of my private blocks which is to say; this seems to be an election between President Obama three and President Trump. It’s almost like between the two people. You have never seen such active engagement of an ex-president against a sitting president who is an incumbent in the election. Never. Now just coming to the Georgia election I don’t have a copy of the email but when we extract it, will share it and we’ll put it up but I’ve seen the anecdotal quotes which is to say President Obama is Raising campaign money for Democrats in the state of Georgia. And one of the sentences that state very clearly the policy and the thinking behind Obama, which says For the sake of the project Progressive agenda, this is about Progressive agenda, which is about taxes which is about immigration, which is about the general welfare policies. This election, this run-off has to be won by the Democratic party. Otherwise, the progressive agenda is at threat. We have come this far and we have to win so please contribute $25 whatever you now, you can contribute. I think the number 25, I saw in the code so that’s why I’m stating that. I could be wrong. But that number is visible to me. So I wrote which is to say that this sounds very highly unusual for an ex-president to go this far against a sitting President. Right? You’ve never seen, you know, George Bush, you know, you campaign about policies, you come and go but to come and say that the progressive agenda is the people who are behind this Progressive agenda is fascinating. Ok, AOC Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, she’s progressive, she’s likely to contest against Chuck Schumer. Who is the other person? The other person is Warren, the right formation of unions, you know, we are going to have a Union in Google. Have you ever thought about Google in Silicon Valley Union 300 people forming a union in Google and Warren saying I salute that the formation of Union in Google is unheard of but this is what they mean Progressive agenda which is to say unionization welfare, and more welfare and you know more kind of socialistic policies? So what is here is at stake. That’s why we call it a battle for America. Are we going towards complete Socialism or are we going towards what I mean we haven’t even discussed the new budget that Biden is contemplating or Obama has put together for Biden, you know the budget which is likely to be presented? I mean if you look at the taxes and if you look at some of the pork belly stuff that they’ve laid out. It’s another 5-6 trillion dollars at least by 5 trillion dollars when you add the numbers that can be added to the total debt. So, therefore, this election sir is about that to conclude.

Sree Iyer: You know, I’m putting aside two trillion dollars to recover from the pandemic is one thing but just on indiscriminately attaching things is one thing completely different and from what the early leads suggest Georgia could very well flip to Democrats which means that there is going to be a challenge but let’s hope that it doesn’t happen. It’s a very very close race. It is on the knife’s edge. It depends upon the turnout if the GOP is able to mobilize its forces and if Every Republican in Georgia goes and casts his or her vote. It could be a very close race, but this is how you are going to see and it is an indication of how America’s politics is going to be from here on and I’m not sure that many Americans are used to, what is going to play out. In fact, I don’t know what to tell, all these social media companies were gung-ho about suppressing news and taking on this progressive agenda and like a serpent, it is coming back to bite them. What do you think about that, sir?

Sridhar Chityala: Well, I’ll give you a completely different contrarian example, a completely contrary example to make my point. Let’s take the case of Jack Ma, Jack Ma comes from China with CCP kind of a mindset. He came in, with entrepreneurial zeal and he formed Alibaba, he formed ANT financial. Everybody in the United States said rarara, he has disappeared. And there is nothing from institutional investors, there’s nothing from the tech, there’s nothing from the business, there’s nothing from politics, there’s nothing from his own alma mater. It just reflects the mindset, this is within the United States, the only guy who has made a statement is secretary Pompeo, who has said ‘this is another example of the types of policies that China embraces, which is against the values that we follow within the in the United States. This is no different from Tiananmen Square.’ Those were his exact words last night.

What is the contra view of all these companies that you mentioned? Have you seen anything coming out of Silicon Valley? We support, we need to know where Jack Ma is. If it is about fiscal issues and if it is about regulatory that you want to take over Ant, you want to take over Alibaba, great, but why should the person disappear? None, so that reflects these two distinctly different set of policies and thought processes that characterize the choices that one makes in this particular election.

Sree Iyer: Yes, indeed and let’s go and take a quick look back at the Battle For America. So tomorrow it is expected that at least a hundred congressman from the Republican Party are going to question it in the house and we know for a fact that one Senator at least is going to be standing up in the Senate and also disputing the Electoral College votes. So, is there anything else that is going to be discussed, sir? Like for example, President Trump said he will submit evidence. Who would be doing that in your opinion? I’m not sure how this is going to play out. This is new territory so I’m just curious.

Sridhar Chityala: It’s a billion-dollar question. So let me answer your first part and then I’ll come to the second part. The first part of the question is that we had Mo Brooks who is leading this effort from the house. He says hundred house Representatives are very clear. All five states are going to object. So these five states’ representative members within the house from the Republican side who were raising this issue around the transparency of the elections blah blah blah. From the Republican side, there was this a Ted Cruz led effort. Jim Jordan, Josh Holly, Josh has been the most outspoken, he’s the guy who filed cases against Mike Pence and saying ‘he should not violate from his constitutional principles and therefore he should not be restrained from his constitutional principle to make the choices.’ So he made that statement.

So now to come back to the question, so what would be the case? There were questions around who will represent these five states? There’s one representative from Pennsylvania, so that’s clear. So, what about the other five battleground states is the question. So yesterday I think after their internal discussions in the Senate, by the way, 25 members of the Senate from the Republican party at least 25 which includes the leadership have stated that they are not going to object to the elections. A very important point to remember. They are not going to object to the elections. What will happen when each of these states begins to put a smudge of them to say that they are decertifying and certifying begs the question as to what happens to the leadership team in the Senate, that’s a different discussion. But to get back to the point, Jim Jordan made come out of that meeting and announced in very clear and specific terms, ‘We have two objectives. Objective number one is to communicate to the American people that only State legislatures are constitutionally allowed to frame rules, conduct the elections, and certify the elections. It is not the responsibility of the executive or the judicial branch in each of the state. We’re going to point out in each state how the judicial and executive overreach violated the Constitutional law in each of the Six States. We’re going to point out. So the American people are made aware. So that’s number one.

Number two is everybody says there’s no fraud, everything is certified, everything is gung-ho. If people walked in the building with the suitcases, they wheeled in the suitcases so that they can take their pillows out and sleep on those tables. Nothing was there. If a pipe burst, the pipe burst because somebody went. So it’s all nonsense if 438,000 votes were not digitally accounted for, it’s an accounting issue we will take care of it. So nothing there’s no fraud. So for those people, they want to establish that there was a fraud. Now, how exactly they’re present that evidence, we don’t know but they say they want to tell them that there is a fraud on three things – one; duplicate votes, two; certifications of these votes and auditing, and three in the counting itself. There was this pattern of switching that one saw. So he was very clear that is there are three things one is the duplicate votes, number two is the certification process which was not followed, the audit process and number three is the pattern of switching that took place. These are three things that we want to point out, how exactly they’re present the evidence, we don’t know. But these are three objectives of the Senate to point out to the United States, its American people that this is the battle for America and this is what we are fighting because if this is created as precedence, then without contest we would have probably diluted what is the constitutional validity of the whole election process and system in this country. That is the objective of the Senate.

Sree Iyer: Viewers, we are running out of time. So we’re just going to skip over the global news items. You can see that Rouhani has said Trump will be dead in a few days. Iran is accelerating Uranium enrichment. South Korea is flagging some things. Taiwan is finding some activity going on. Briefly, maybe you can touch upon Taiwan, what they have seen on the South China Sea and Formosa Strait, sir.

Sridhar Chityala: Well, I think that we covered at length about the significance of the Taiwan Straits. So we saw that after our session, by coincidence, the US Aircraft carriers went through the second Passage through the median line. The Taiwanese government is reporting overnight that they had no less than 350 incursions just in the last 30 days. In the last 12 months or so they have had more than 2300 incursions that have actually caused the Taiwanese government close to $800 million in terms of scrambling its defences and preserving and protecting its independence. Its sovereignty and Independence is under threat, so therefore it has cost them that money. So Taiwan remains the front and centre, the number of issues on the global side we don’t have the time that’s a separate topic by itself. There are lots of things that happen in the last 24 hours, but just to close out, that’s the Taiwanese issue.

Sree Iyer: Yes, and the US has withdrawn its aid to Srilanka amounting to $480 million because of some developments regarding China. We’re going to cover that in the next few days. Today, We are out of time on that one. On covid, remember viewers that we have predicted that Boris Johnson will not be going for the Republic Day function celebrations at least a week ago. So, please remember that we are at the forefront. We are the tip of the sphere in terms of giving you the news that is accurate and factual do not go by some of these snarky comments that people put on our website. We are truly Democratic, we welcome all points of view, as long as somebody rewards us with facts, we welcome them with open arms and we will provide you with the facts from our side. That is fine. So, let’s move on, sir on covid. There is an interesting story going on in the state of New York. Andrew Cuomo is now blaming the hospitals. He seems to be playing the blame game. I mean, he’s out-trumping Trump.

Sridhar Chityala: Well, firstly, he is a great presidential candidate to represent the Democratic party and the liberal agenda. First, he blames Trump because it’s all politics and Trump is not following, so he went on his tirade first. Second, he went on the tirade, we don’t have adequate PCRs and masks and so on. So, when a big Health-care ship landed in Port of New York, he imported huge Masks from China. Then he went on to say that we have been denied, a certain number of vaccines. So then Trump said, ‘no, no, you have not been denied, what you have been given is on a pro-rata proportionate basis. Now, he’s released a statement yesterday which states that ‘the slowness in the implementation of vaccinization in the state of New York is because hospitals are not cooperating.’ So this is his statement. Then he further went on to say we are now imposing a specific Public Law and those who are not going to follow this public law, we will be passing this in the legislature, the state has the right to detain them. So it is a very interesting game that is going on.

What is most astonishing is two pictures that caught our attention; one, you had Wuhan which is the epicentre of this virus, where hundreds of thousands of people are celebrating the New Year Eve and New Year. And we had almost empty Time Square in my recent memory. I’ve never seen an empty Times Square on a New Year  Eve, except for the ball drop everything else was empty. Except De Blasio having a great part in somewhere. So, therefore, that is a reflection of the state in terms of how we have mismanaged covid in the state.

Sree Iyer: Sir, finally let’s look at the markets and this is a very fascinating thing that has been playing out. A few days back the United States government had determined that it was going to delist three China telecom stocks and then in an abrupt world fast, we read now that NYSE has stopped that. Now, with this kind of whiplash in the market if someone knew a priori that this was going to happen they could have made a killing. What are your thoughts, sir?

Sridhar Chityala: Well, I think the NYSE released a statement, this again overnight, which is ‘they spoke with the office of foreign assets and control and who said, they have this is a political decision so therefore they have no objections. So, immediately they reversed their decision. These stocks went up in the Hong Kong market when they found this. So again, I tweeted both Secretary Pompeo and NYSE and CNBC which reported the news ‘do we have one country and two policies?’ So, therefore, we have one country United States, so you have a presidential executive order, which says these companies colluded with the companies which are associated with the PLA which has a security issue. Remember all these are telecom companies. Okay, all these are Telecom companies, not anybody else. Lo and behold the office of the foreign which is under the treasury basically says there’s no issue. And this is a major major Market decision and done with almost disdain and it also reflects the gap in a transition phase where the political agenda takes charge over national agenda. This was done albeit political by a sitting president elected through action and then you have some Department which says, I ignore it and this is the price of democracy. This will not happen in China. This is the price of democracy. Anybody can do anything and get away with it with no accountability.

Sree Iyer: With that, we bring our program to a close today. We’re going to have a very interesting session tomorrow and the next few days are going to be absolutely fascinating, the edge of the seat thriller as this plays out. The last word about the US Presidency has not been said, and thanks for following PGurus, do subscribe to our channel and do consider donating to our cause. We are completely reliant on your funding and generosity to keep this program going. Sridharji, as always a pleasure to talk with you sir, and we’ll be back tomorrow. Same time. Same place. Namaskar.

Sridhar Chityala:  Namaskar and thank you so much, sir. Have a wonderful day.