Here's the infrastructure bill! — Wall Street looks beyond it — Pelosi hits back on evictions

From: POLITICO's Morning Money - Monday Aug 02,2021 12:03 pm
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By Ben White and Aubree Eliza Weaver

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Quick Fix

Here’s the infrastructure bill! — Yes, we finally have actual text of the BIF or the BID or whatever acronym you want to slap on the bipartisan infrastructure deal that made it into temporal form Sunday in the Senate and could clear the upper chamber this week.

House progressives will still require promises and hand-holding on what will be in the much larger reconciliation package. But they are (probably) not going to torch President Joe Biden’s big bipartisan achievement. Formally, the vehicle is H.R. 3684.

Obviously the $550B in new money, while quite large, is nowhere near enough for Democrats eager to move on to the “human infrastructure” portions of Biden’s agenda. But the bill has quite a lot in it, per our Marianne LeVine, including spending on roads, bridges, highways, broadband and water infrastructure.

Compass Point’s Isaac Boltansky with some of the breakdown: “The $550B package includes $110B for roads and bridges, $73B for the electrical grid, $66B for rail, $65B for broadband, $55B for drinking water projects, $46B for resiliency, $39B for transit, $25B for airports, $17B for ports/waterways, and $11B for safety. …

The next one is bigger – “[I]nvestors remain focused on the forthcoming budget reconciliation package given that the total spending figure will be far higher and the tax components will be significant. … [W]e continue to believe that the odds favor Democrats clearing a budget reconciliation package later this year that will result in higher taxes on capital, corporations, and high-earners”

GOOD MONDAY MORNING — Welcome to August! Congress still has some heavy lifting on the infrastructure bill, government funding and the debt ceiling. But the path out of town without a wreck is becoming more clear. Email me on bwhite@politico.com and follow me on Twitter @morningmoneyben.

 

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Driving the day

PELSOI VOLLEYS BACK TO WHITE HOUSE ON EVICTION BAN — Our Katy O'Donnell: “Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her leadership team on Sunday urged … Biden to immediately renew and extend the eviction moratorium until Oct. 18 after House Democrats failed to marshal the votes to prevent its lapse this weekend.

“Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) and Assistant Speaker Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) issued a joint statement Sunday night putting the ball back in the Biden administration’s court, after the White House on Thursday said it could not extend the eviction ban and urged Congress to do it. …

“The statement from House leadership marked the latest escalation of tensions between congressional Democrats and the Biden administration over the fate of the eviction moratorium, which ended Saturday after being first implemented by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in September.”

REAL TALK — The eviction ban lapse is the first REALLY BIG break between Biden and the left (though not the only one) and it’s gonna leave a mark. Obviously, Pelosi wanted no part of the White House effort to make it a Congressional issue. Quite a stiff brushback of that effort. Not one you see a lot between the West Wing and the Speaker’s office.

AOC GETS HEATED ON EVICTIONS — Our Hannah Farrow: “Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday said Democrats cannot blame Republicans for the expiration of the eviction moratorium. ‘The House and House leadership had the opportunity to vote to extend the moratorium. ...

“‘We cannot in good faith blame the Republican Party when House Democrats have the majority," the progressive New York Democrat said on … ‘This Court order came down on the White House a month ago, and the White House waited until the day before the House adjourned to release a statement asking Congress to extend the moratorium.’”

CAN THE CHINESE MARKET BE TRUSTED ANYMORE? — Mohamed A. El-Erian on Bloomberg Opinion: “China’s high-profile regulatory curbs on private companies have done more than inflict losses on domestic and international investors.

"They have also raised questions about whether the Chinese market as a whole risks becoming ‘uninvestible’ for foreign investors, what that means for other financial markets and how investors could react.”

Fly Around

FEDERAL EVICTION PROTECTIONS HAVE ENDED, LEAVING RENTERS SCRAMBLING — Vox’s Maryam Gamar: “It’s August 1, and rent is due. That’s a big change for many Americans who had been unable to pay rent but were protected from eviction by a federal moratorium. Now, those protections are gone. …”

But the eviction crisis has let to some stronger tenant protections — AP’s Michael Casey and Ben Finley: “The Virginia event in late July is part of a growing national movement — bolstered by tens of billions of dollars in federal rental assistance — to find ways to keep millions of at-risk tenants hurt by the coronavirus pandemic in their homes.

“The push has the potential to reshape a system long skewed in favor of landlords that has resulted in about 3.7 million evictions a year — about seven every minute — according to the Eviction Lab at Princeton University. Many are Black and Latino families.”

REDUCTION IN FED’S ASSET PURCHASES MIGHT NOT SPARK ‘TAPER TANTRUM’ — WSJ’s Paul Kiernan: “Investors barely reacted last week when Federal Reserve officials signaled they could announce plans to start reducing their bond buying later this year. That was a relief for policy makers eager to avoid a repeat of the market turmoil that erupted in 2013 when the Fed made a similar announcement. The Fed’s next test will come when it outlines a concrete plan for when and how it will scale back, or taper, the asset purchases.

“The central bank has been buying $120 billion a month of Treasury and mortgage securities since June 2020, a pace officials say will continue until the economic recovery advances further. By bidding up the price of long-term bonds, the purchases tend to hold down borrowing costs for businesses and consumers, since bond prices and yields move in opposite directions.”

INFLATION IS HOT NOW, BUT INVESTORS AREN’T HOLDING THEIR BREATH — WSJ’s Akane Otani and Sam Goldfarb: “Investors are betting the inflationary streak that has sent prices of everything from used cars to lumber soaring will fade in the coming years, a reassuring sign for markets struggling to find direction.

Few issues have vexed money managers more this year than inflation. As the global economy has regained its footing, prices for goods and services have risen—in many cases far faster than economists had anticipated. Labor shortages and supply-chain disruptions snarling the global shipping industry have added to inflationary pressures.”

FED’S BRAINARD CAN’T WRAP HEAD AROUND NOT HAVING CENTRAL BANK DIGITAL CURRENCY — Reuters’ Ann Saphir: “Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard on Friday laid out a range of reasons for "urgency" around the issue of developing a U.S. central bank digital currency, including the fact that other countries such as China are moving ahead with their own.

“‘The dollar is very dominant in international payments, and if you have the other major jurisdictions in the world with a digital currency, a CBDC (central bank digital currency) offering, and the U.S. doesn't have one, I just, I can't wrap my head around that,’ Brainard told the Aspen Institute Economic Strategy Group. ‘That just doesn't sound like a sustainable future to me.’”

MINNEAPOLIS FED CHIEF SAYS DELTA COULD SLOW LABOR MARKET RECOVERY — Reuters’ Sarah N. Lynch: “Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President Neel Kashkari said on Sunday that concerns about the spread of the contagious Delta variant could slow the U.S. labor market recovery.

“‘It’s really creating a bunch of caution,’ he told CBS’ ‘Face the Nation’, noting that between seven and nine million Americans are still out of work likely due to anxiety about the coronavirus. Kashkari added he had been ‘optimistic’ before that many would be returning to work and while that is still his ‘base case scenario,’ he said that ‘if people are nervous about the Delta variant, that could slow some of that labor market recovery.’”

CRYPTO INVESTORS GET READY FOR MORE TAXES, BUT CLEARER RULES — Bloomberg’s Ben Steverman, Claire Ballentine and Donald Moore: “Sure, you might have to actually pay U.S. taxes on those crypto trades.

"But at least it will be easier to figure out how much you owe. A new push by Congress to require crypto brokers to report transactions to the Internal Revenue Service could create some unwelcome tax bills but could clarify rules for traders and users of Bitcoin and other digital tokens, potentially strengthening the system in the long run, people in the industry say.”

ROBINHOOD SOLD IPO SHARES TO MORE THAN 300K OF ITS CUSTOMERS — WSJ’s Marie Beaudette: “Hundreds of thousands of Robinhood Markets Inc.’s customers bought shares in the trading app’s rocky initial public offering earlier this week. In a post on its app, Robinhood said 301,573 users participated in the IPO, which raised about $2 billion and valued the company at $32 billion. That represents about 1.3% of the company’s 22.5 million funded accounts as of June 30.”

For Your Radar

ENGAGED — Maya Serkin, a client success manager at Indigov, recently got engaged to Mike Jones, who works at Jump Trading. The couple met in NYC when Maya had just given her notice at Davidson Kempner. They traveled the country together and now live in Chicago with their Malinois pup. Mike proposed at Tanglewood Music Center in Massachusetts over a private picnic and stunning view of the Stockbridge Bowl …

WELCOME TO THE WORLD – Josh Lipsky, director of the GeoEconomics Center at the Atlantic Council and an Obama State Department and White House alum, and Leah Eiserike Lipsky, a speech language pathologist for Montgomery County Public Schools, welcomed Hannah Beth Lipsky on Saturday morning. She came in at 8 lbs, 7 oz and joins big sister Clara.

 

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