☕ Happy Thursday! Today's Smart Brevity™ count: 1,194 words ... 5½ minutes.
☕ Happy Thursday! Today's Smart Brevity™ count: 1,194 words ... 5½ minutes.
Illustration: Eniola Odetunde/Axios
The current climate of free money — for everyone who already has money — will continue, or even grow, into 2021 and the new administration, Dion Rabouin writes in Axios Markets.
What's happening: The Fed-driven economy relies on the creation of trillions of dollars — literally out of thin air — that are used to purchase bonds and push money into a pandemic-ravaged economy that has long been dependent on free cash and is only growing more addicted.
Stocks are hitting all-time highs, while millions remain out of work and on unemployment insurance. That's not a coincidence.
Between the lines: It's a Goldilocks environment for stocks, but a bearish one for workers.
Watch this space: During his testimony before the House Financial Services Committee yesterday, Fed chair Jerome Powell assured Congress that the Fed would remain on its current policy path "well into the future."
Xi Jinping reviews troops during a military parade in Beijing last year. Photo: Thomas Peter/Reuters
Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe today will publicly warn that China's threat to the U.S. is a defining issue of our time, a senior administration official tells me.
I'm told the DNI will make a series of public statements and appearances outlining intelligence that argues China is the greatest national security threat that America faces.
Between the lines: The P.R. blitz is one of the first major components of a broader, administration-wide effort to raise the alarm about China and to build consensus and awareness about China's intent to supplant the United States as the world's dominant power.
Thought bubble from Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian, author of Axios China:
Attorney General Bill Barr at the U.S. Capitol on Nov. 9. Photo: Samuel Corum/Getty Images
Attorney General Barr may be fired or resign, as President Trump seethes about Barr's statement this week that no widespread voter fraud has been found.
Reality check ... One reason Trump might not follow through: It's not obvious which government employee would be willing to go further than Barr in satisfying what even some in Trump's inner orbit see as unreasonable demands.
More than 100,000 Americans are now in the hospital with coronavirus infections — a new record, Axios' Sam Baker and Danielle Alberti report.
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
The Biden administration's Cabinet appointees are likely to be champions of bold futurism in urban planning, Axios Cities author Jennifer A. Kingson reports.
Mayors who pioneered smart technology in their own cities — like Rahm Emanuel of Chicago, Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles and Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta — are top contenders to run the Department of Transportation.
U.S. mayors tend to be an optimistic bunch. But a poll out today finds them unusually pessimistic about post-pandemic recovery, Jennifer A. Kingson writes.
Illustration: Eniola Odetunde/Axios
In tech, activists argue, decision-making power remains largely concentrated in the hands of white men, Ina Fried reports in Axios Login.
Why it matters: In this view, unless the tech industry finds a way to reform its power discrepancies, its fundamental inequalities won't change, even if the industry manages to improve its poor track record on diversity.
President Trump and other Republicans worry that the wild conspiracy tales spun by lawyers Sidney Powell and Lin Wood may cost the party Georgia's Senate runoffs on Jan. 5 — and thus control of the Senate, Jonathan Swan reports.
A source close to POTUS told Swan: "The president directly communicated to both Powell and Wood [yesterday] the importance of re-electing Perdue and Loeffler, and believes his traveling to and campaigning in Georgia this weekend will make clear what MAGA voters should be doing.”
Doug Band (right), President Clinton and brother-in-law Hugh Rodham in Chappaqua, N.Y., the day after Clinton left office — Jan. 21, 2001. Photo: Spencer Platt/Newsmakers
Multiple people probably texted you this story yesterday, but it's worth actually reading ... "Doug Band worked alongside Bill Clinton every day for nearly two decades," Gabe Sherman writes in Vanity Fair, "first as a body man and then as one of the primary architects of his lucrative and often-fraught post-presidency. Then came a seismic falling out":
A Clinton family spokesperson told Sherman: "No staffer has ever used their role to serve their interests as much as Doug Band."
Rafer Johnson, who won the decathlon at the 1960 Rome Olympics and helped subdue Robert F. Kennedy's assassin in 1968, died in L.A. at 86, AP reports.
Go deeper: L.A. Times, "Champion left legacy of golden moments."
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