Sree Iyer: A very good morning to all the viewers across the globe. This is Sree Iyer, PGurus editor, welcoming you back to our daily update with Sridhar, as always it’s a pleasure to have a Sridhar Chityala’s company. SridharJi Namaskar and welcome to PGurus channel.
Sridhar Chityala: Namaskar and good morning to all and good evening to folks in India and good afternoon to people in that Europe.
Sree Iyer: Viewers, before I hand off control to SridharJi, I would like to give you a very good reason for why you should be following PGurus. PGurus took a principled stand on three different countries, PGurus supported Narendra Modi in the 2019 elections, PGurus supported Conservatives in the United Kingdom election and PGurus supported Republicans in the United States election and looks like all three bets of ours are going to come off. The election has not been called in nine states, but it is leaning towards Trump, Two for Biden and seven for Trump. And when the dust settles, we will see that Trump would have won this election. Again, this is a basically a call on our part and to get a little bit more perspective a little bit more in-depth, because there are lots of Senate races that have gone unexpectedly in favour of somebody and you’re going to talk about all that stuff. SridharJi, take it away.
Sridhar Chityala: Yes indeed, sir. So it’s been a fascinating election and many many unusual things which are for the first time close to hundred million people voted ahead of the election day a large number of people came, it was orderly organized and people exercise their franchise in the oldest democracy. That’s a kind of a telling lesson to the world that democracy works and function very seamlessly. Why participation rate from all communities, minority-majority and etc., all ethnic backgrounds and so on and so forth. I wish we had had a very clear and very definitely outcome, which is the direction we were heading to and but, we are where we are right now here whether it will take 24 hours, whether it will take one week. It’s a matter of how the process would work, whether there is going to be a legal intervention that would kind of determine the outcome. But as far as, both sides are staking the claim that they are holding the league in either the unannounced states of Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, but, last night when you look at the numbers, Georgia was clearly, Trump was leading, then you have North Carolina as well as Pennsylvania, I mean, one can debate but the story is clear he was leading and probably Wisconsin there was the lead had changed to hairline But there again, you know Trump was to come back. But, you have all these complexities of state legislatures enacting laws as to how the process maps out in the counting as well as in voting and the deadlines. So, that will determine in my view the outcome but Trump team confident as much as Biden’s team is confident.
The three key messages that I would like to leave for everybody is, we have stated this time and time and time again, the pollsters went wrong, were wrong abysmally wrong, there are no 10 basis points, there were no 12 points, there were no 15% points. Almost right till the end of the campaign, President Trump was leading the popular vote contrary, so the pollsters cannot be so wide apart, right? So obviously there’s some question number one. Number two, the second message is that there was no blue wave, so let’s be very clear, here’s no blue wave. So its red defence and possibly in conjunction with a red offence that has helped Republicans to be where they are, which is what they’ve been saying. Number three, money does not win elections that is very clearly established, number ranges from 75 million to 100 million in Kentucky for McConnell, which McConnell Won. The number is somewhere around 60-65 million against Lindsey Graham, Lindsay won. The money has been put in Susan Collins, but she’s leading in Maine, so you can see that, when it comes to exercising people’s franchise the United States demonstrating that money does not win, 98% of the billionaire’s wealth, which we pointed yesterday went to the Democratic Party, that’s by press reports.
Sree Iyer: Well, the Senate races have actually gone unexpectedly in favour of Republicans. It was expected that Republicans might, in fact, lose the Senate so far and I’ve only seen one flip, which was in Colorado, Hickenlooper has won against his Republican contestant and that is won first for the Democrat. How do you see the house races, I see that Ilhan Omar seems to be leading and I don’t know about the Indian American candidates in enough detail, but we will have a little bit more information for you when we are coming back again on a little wider panel of the hangout in about an hour’s time, do join us for that one too. I’m I know I am pitching for another program because we are still gathering a lot of information. We will have more information in that program that’s going to start at 8 PM IST along with Sridhar ChityalaJi, we will have the professor MD Nalapat and TV Mohandas Pai.
So, back to this programming schedule. So, you mentioned that Trump is expected to win in many of these remaining counts. And if I look at the number of the percentage of votes that are being counted, there is some dichotomy I see, yesterday before I went to sleep. I had seen that Pennsylvania counts stood at 80% and today I see that it is come down to 74. So, there is some numbering mismatches that are coming up. There is something there; I don’t know what to say. I mean all the counting stations actually they went to sleep at some time around midnight or an hour after. So, those will resume presumably in about 15-20 minutes time. And then the Count will start again. Now, in terms of process the United States does not have a national election commission, isn’t it? The result has to be declared at the state-wise or is it even at the county wise? Can you please throw a little bit of light on the technical process?
Sridhar Chityala: The state legislature passes the rules and then gets extended to the various forms of government within the state and it is not contestable. The State Legislative thing, what is contestable is the process within the framework of what the state has passed from the perspective of the conduct of the elections within the state and the announcement of the results. So, therefore I think that that’s the process that is why it varies from state to state you will see inconsistencies, but then there are state nuances that’s why the United States is a federation right so, therefore, you have laws enacted that appropriately fits that specific state.
Sree Iyer: So just to understand this, 20 years ago, when the Florida election was in doubt I happened to be in Florida. I happen to be in Miami-Dade County which is exactly the place where all this counting was going on, manual counting was going on. I was supposed to be on a vacation, but I ended up sitting in front of the TV most of the time because you had these new words called chad, chadless, hanging chad and so on and so forth and unfortunately for Al Gore, he ended up on the losing side, even though the manual count taken by a newspaper in Florida said that after 6-8 weeks, after the Supreme Court of America had ruled that, it’s going to go in Bush’s favour. He had actually won Florida, but that is only for academic records. Everything was sealed. So in this particular case, one of the challenges that all these states face is the fact that close to 102 million votes were mailed in before the election even started. That’s a big number that the first time that the US has had such a huge volume of votes that were mailed in. You have to visually inspect some of these mails it is not something where you can just feed it into the scanner and then let the scanner spit out the result. That’s how it used to be. But there is going to be a little bit more work. And I know for a fact that is one Senate race that is really unusual that has Dr Shiva Ayyadurai. He has been asking people to write in his name. There is an official Republican Contender for senate, there is an official Democrat and Shiva Ayyadurai has inserted himself into this one and said that you can hand-write my name and that means that all the Massachusetts votes will have to be hand scanned and looked at especially for the senate race. And I don’t know where the status of that is, we will update you with that also an hours time. But let us take a look at economy and markets worldwide. How are they doing sir?
Sridhar Chityala: Well, The betting went up and down last night and when they saw indications are potential Trump and clarity on the victory towards President Trump from Biden, the same thing happened in the markets. The stock markets were up, particularly Nasdaq futures went up to almost 4% and then they applied the circuit breakers to the Futures. So the market seemed to indicate towards the potential Trump win, in terms of the continuation of the existing pro-market policies. The markets even today, Dow is up 0.7%, S&P, the last time I looked, it was around 1.3-1.7%. And then the Nasdaq futures was up around close to 3%. So there’s still a positive sentiment that is pro-market, it doesn’t mean that Biden victory will dampen the hopes because it simply implies that there’s a known and there is going to be a new person but there is a positive feeling that he will continue with the larger stimulus as the issues around the text. So the question market seems to be reconciled to the fact that there will be a positive continuation of the monetary and as well as the fiscal policy – low-interest rates and higher stimulus.
Sree Iyer: I just want you to answer a few hypothetical questions sir because this is not going to be held against you or anything like that, but should Trump come back how much of his team do you think will return?
Sridar Chityala: It’s a great question. I think Trump is as unpredictable as one can think of. So, therefore, there is nothing one can speculate, but I can reasonably give my own kind of Impressions and opinions. I think Pompeo has done a good job, and I think we discussed it yesterday that there is a possibility of Mr Suga, the Japanese prime minister coming down as early as the end of November or mid-December if the Trump administration continues because it won’t be a lame duck. Obviously, if Biden wins the election then that meeting is now deferred to Jan, at the end of January. So, therefore, I think there’s a reasonable element of comfort that Pompeo will continue, Mnuchin has made it very clear that he would like to come back, he likes his boss. He seems to have done well, only in the last few days, there was a hiccup around getting the stimulus thing done? Right? So he has done an outstanding job in terms of managing the economy. There’s no contest with, the FED will continue, Jerome Powell has done an outstanding job toeing the line and pro stimulus and pro zero rate policy, which is market-friendly. As far as Esper is concerned he’s been low profile and has done a great job. He was in India last week and visited with Pompeo those six countries. So I think there is general stability in terms of the people that he has had around in key portfolios, which is the treasury, state and defence.
Sree Iyer: Now take the other side. There is going to be a Biden government. Do you see any candidates showing up, for example, treasury secretary and Secretary of State and so on and so forth. Do you have any predictions on those, sir?
Sridhar Chityala: No, no. No. I don’t. I think that they are keeping it a closely guarded secret. Democrats have a very strong page, they’ve been in power, they’re many people come from Wall Street and very similar to on the treasury side, if always they come from the Wall Street. The state would be one of the n numbers of candidates who are sitting there. I mean just as the vice-presidential candidacy was quite unexpected if I have to say but, she’s done a great job, Kamala Harris has done a great job with Biden. So I can’t speculate what the Biden team will look like.
Sree Iyer: Well that brings us to a close on this segment of our daily update. Do join us tomorrow. We’ll have more updates for you. Hopefully, the air will clear on some of these contests, and we will give you all the updates. As always it’s a pleasure having you with us, Sridharji and viewers please do not forget to tune-in again in one hours time. We’re going to have a slightly more detailed discussion. Thank you once again Sridharji and talk to you soon.
Sridhar Chityala: Thank you. Namaskar.
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