Sree Iyer: Good morning and welcome to episode number 24 of the daily update with Sridhar. I’m your host Sree Iyer. And as always it’s becoming very interesting the way the United States elections are panning out. To know more about the latest situation on the ground, let’s go over to Sridhar Chityalaji. Sridharji, Namaskar and welcome to Pgurus Channel.
Sridhar Chityala: Namaskar and good morning to all in the United States and good evening to those in India and good afternoon to those in Europe and good night to those in the Australia zone. And well, I think we have we entered a very interesting phase in the US Elections, the four remaining States, Nevada, Georgia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina are the only outstanding. The Midwest states have been had all turned to president Vice President Biden. We also have entered a phase where there are legal challenges being mounted for the process that the respective states have managed in terms of determining the outcome and there is actually an effort to stop counting in Pennsylvania and Georgia because they believe the Republican Party believes that there is no access to the Republican representatives in the boot centres. And if they are far distant from accounting, so they’re not aware of the activities going on and also the counts that Republican party has in these specific States doesn’t seem to reconcile with the numbers that they are seeing coming out of either outcome or lead changes that occur overnight. There is also a perception or based on anecdotal as well as other evidence, there, suddenly we found hundred thousand votes missing that’s been added. We found 45,000 votes that are added. These postal ballots came little late and so we have added. So, there’s a huge credibility question around what is the process and what is an independent objective process to validate when the signatures were put, when it was date stamped and whether they are really genuine votes or not. They could be genuine votes. That’s the view of the Republican. But why we are being denied access? what is also strange is that they conceded defeat almost instantaneously in Florida, where the margins are fairly similar like 2.4 or 2.5 and whereas the states where which is in contention, I am not drawing any conclusions here, seems to appear are all managed by mostly by the Democratic governors and you can see the debate that is going on between the Pennsylvania representatives and be Republican party, which is quite vocal. Rudy Giuliani is representing the case. So, I think that in my humble view we are probably either one week away or one month away or three months away depending on what the legal process that is going to emerge out of all these cases that are being filed.
Sree Iyer: Sir, one observation I have is that in order for the Trump team to Prevail? I heard that they have now lawsuits in three different states, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and I think Georgia. So, in order for them to prevail then they need to have compelling evidence to overturn some of the results. It could be like this particular set of votes are not valid, they should be taken out of the tally and so on and so forth. So do you think in your opinion the Republicans have that kind of compelling evidence?
Sridhar Chityala: They have compelling evidence, which is one of the reasons why they are mounting the cases in these three specific states. I mean Arizona is also under consideration, is in question, they are waiting for the final count. The belief is that there are two essential principles behind contention. The first principle is the Republican representatives in this counting centres have indicated that they are not with is the line of sight of how the ballots are being opened up and how the ballots are being kind of put into the accounting system the process, they have no visibility. Covid has been used as a tool to keep them away while the Democratic representative seems to be quite comfortable where they are. The second is that always these new votes seem to appear, X number of votes appear in the night and then suddenly the count numbers change. Now, it is conceded that almost there is a precedence of a huge number of votes that are postal all point to Democrats where Republicans chose to come in person and do the voting right? So, there is that this what they’re saying is that these votes turning up in the counting Center whether they have passed the test of stringent screening in terms of the signatures dates and stamps in the ballots for it to be considered right or whether they were backdated etc., etc.,. So, I think one is the process and second is the legitimacy of these votes which has not been independent and objectively validated. So, I think this is where the Republicans are coming from and Rudy Giuliani yesterday was quite specific, this could have come from Mars, this could have come from D and C. We don’t know because we cannot see. We have not been allowed to see that’s the contention.
Sree Iyer: That rather raises very important questions and again state to state laws change, state to state the type of ballot that are used changes. So, we are in for a few more days of uncertainty before things start settling down. For example in Arizona, there most of the counting is done, not only just Arizona many states, you have volunteers who come in and count the vote, these are not paid, people. They are just citizens like you and I were coming and Counting the votes and they said that they were going to be updating only once a day and today’s update will be coming in about 12 hours’ time. So, Arizona might not be declared till another two to three days. Pennsylvania on the other hand, they are going to allow votes to be mailed in, even now for three days, they gave an extension that is 4th 5th and 6th. So that, you know again that has its own bent. Even the state’s Supreme Court said it is okay to do that, but I don’t know if it will stand muster, it will pass muster at the Supreme Court and the Federal level. You don’t know, so, you have all these hotchpotches of situations and issues. The most compelling thing to me is that some evidence has emerged out of Wisconsin again, these are all tweets that I’m going by, I don’t have any validity to back up this thing where they were saying in Wisconsin that the number of votes cast was more than the registered number of Voters. So why isn’t Trump team looking at Wisconsin, sir? I’m just asking you a rhetorical question.
Sridhar Chityala: Well, I think they’re looking at all of the data. I think Michigan is also coming contention. Very soon probably Wisconsin may come into contention and even and Nevada may come into contention in terms of the counting. So I think that nothing has been excluded as they go through the discovery process, you know more will come that is why I feel that this could be a stalemate for even three months or four months as the battles are now taken into the courtrooms. So, therefore the point that you made, I mean I have heard in Michigan, the Whistle-blower talking about how the postal authorities were told that this came in today but back stamps it as the 3rd. Okay, we accept ticket as it’s against the Consciousness the name of the person is mentioned. I’m not going sight the name but you know, it’s all over the place. So, therefore, there is a lot of these kinds of activities that are going on, where more truth and more whistleblowers will come out as the days pass. We’ll know, we’ll get to the truth. But clearly, this is one of the most contested and contested elections in the US history and also the participation rate, given it is Covid and if we have one has to go by Biden’s words, Mr President, we have to shut the country down lots of people being killed. To have this high turnout of voters, what exactly is working here? Is it because due to the Covid lots of medical nurses and this and that were appointed to knock door to door to go and collect the votes? We don’t know because it was, first, a very high percentage relative to total voters, eligible voters and second is the highest pre-poll votes received, and third, highest postal ballots received. So everybody is in contention in terms of the process – the validity and the legitimacy of the process. So I think there’s much more water to run beyond just we are counting. In the meanwhile, yesterday itself. Mr Biden and Miss Harris have already set up their transit team and even Mr Biden came and announced we’re going to win this election and we have to be patient and wait for all votes to be counted and the same melodramatic statement like, this is not blue, this is not red, this is the United States. Of course, it is the United States, why is he not allowing Republican representatives to be in the voting centres if it is the United States. So, therefore, we have lots of such emotional issues that pop up.
But the other thing that needs to be calibrated and put within the context if this case is every polling that has been done in the past 12 months is decisively wrong. Every poll that’s been conducted by whether it is Gallup, whether it is New York Times, whether it is CBS, any of these polls, you take a look the numbers are awfully wrong. So, where did these numbers come from 12% points, 14% Points 11 %, is narrowed to about 10% points. There is a blue wave that is imminent in that is coming. None of these things seems to reconcile and by the way of making we discussed this yesterday, there’s a lot of money. They put in for Mitch McConnell, Lindy Graham and Susan Collins. They could have given to all these homeless people, you know who are suffering rather than an election is a process which is on the policy. The other thing that I also want to kind of highlight and point out is the Susan Collin’s election in Maine, I mean, you know, she was supposed to be trailing by, we have lots of audiences here they can go and do their own kind of independent validation, where they were -9 or -10% they were down, she won by pretty close to 9 %. That means the swing the opposite way is about 20% that doesn’t happen, that kind of swing. So, again there is this whole integrated kind off mystery behind this polling, voting, the pre-polls that were conducted in terms of the lead, the differential lead, etc., in the end, the margin has found out very small. The other point that also needs to be emphasized President Trump was castigated as somebody who’s not going to get blue-collared is not going to get a minority, he is not going to get Latino votes, he is not going to get black votes, He’s not going to get Asian votes because all these votes are with us said Democratic party. So, that was their kind of claim, that was proved to be an incorrect and there has been more blacks voting, more Latinos voting, more Asians voting and a broad cross-section of community has supported President Trump. So, there is a lot of such inconsistencies, which gives what I call as the ancillary corollary in terms of the way the process has gone wrong in the US Elections.
Sree Iyer: Sir, in the remaining time I want us to touch upon a little bit upon the markets and Mitch McConnell’s willingness to get stimulus bill passed even while this thing is playing out. Perhaps you can quickly wrap it up. The markets are feeling good perhaps because the Senate is going to be still Republican and we all know for a healthy democracy, for a vibrant democracy and you want both sides to have some amount of power. That’s how the checks and balances come into play. What are your thoughts on the markets and then after that we can wrap up this program?
Sridhar Chityala: Yesterday we had the markets climb 1.8% to 2% between the S&P and NASDAQ. Today I can see free markets is Dow is up. 1.47, S&P is up 1.91, and Nasdaq futures back up again at 2.7. Oil hovering around the 38th and the 10-year bonds is around less than 0.8. So what it points out to is that there was a quick reaction naturally from one side of the fence, which is to say it is an endorsement of mortality around the outcome out of Biden -Harris. But when you actually speak with people in the markets, the markets are giving a thumbs up for the Senate is with the Republicans. Their concern is on two factors. One of them will be more regulations and re-establishment of the regulations that were dismantled which is a hindrance to the business. The cost of regulation and compliance is a layer of the business. That’s number one. Number two, in the second factor that is being given weightage, is that there is a rollback of the taxes because it is the tax which has helped more cash in the hands of the people and driven the economy on an average greater than between 2.5 to 3% over the past four years, the economic growth, except for the contraction in 2020, which is expected to be less than 6% or -5.2, 5.6% depending on the estimates except for 2020. So the story is that the market sentiments have been driven by that there is a balance of power and they will not be unilateral rollback. Remember Bidens came into elections on 4 important lines 4.1 trillions of new taxes, number one.
Number two rollback of Trump taxes and 4.1 trillion of new taxes and which means corporate rates go from 21 to 28 which means is personal slabs go up. The second thing that which is important is he wants to spend 450 billion dollars to put into the Paris accord compliance, which is not actually in the balance sheet, especially the years of pandemic number two. Number three is this whole contentious issue around, no energy, no fracking, we’re going to ban fracking and the consequence is one of the highest employed sectors. What’s the consequence? So, these are the three things that bother minimum wage, right to work, etc. So, these are many things that are business derailleurs within the context the markets are saying they will be checks and balances for Senate in the hands of the Republican Party. And hence, you have seen the past two days of Market sentiments.
Sree Iyer: Thank you very much SridharJi, and viewers do not forget to subscribe to our Channel. SridharJi and I would be doing a separate in-depth look at some of the tech companies and their successes how they managed to become what they are today. This is going to come every weekend or so perhaps for the next few weekends. We will keep you posted on that. Thanks for joining again, and we’ll be back tomorrow. Same time, same channel. Namaskar
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